In an effort to strengthen the state’s abysmal record in enforcing election law, the Legislature last year implemented a new board to review campaign activities. The new Government Accountability Board was set up to enforce elections laws and to handle campaign finance reports.

Yet since the new board was implemented, the GAB has seemingly had trouble with the very laws it was intended to enforce. Just this week, the Board had to remove two members who violated the State Constitution by serving on the Board before their terms as judges had expired (even though they had resigned their positions.) In their press release, the GAB called this constitutional provision “obscure,” as if the Wisconsin Constitution were somehow hard to track down. Fortunately, the state’s Attorney General was able to find his copy under his couch cushions and point out this violation to the Board.

In one of their first actions, the Board announced their intention to regulate campaign advertisements for upcoming elections. Apparently, they believe a board of political appointees should be the ones serving as the speech police for Wisconsin campaigns. Yet nothing in the Wisconsin statutes gives them the ability to regulate the timing and content of political speech. When Legislators passed the law instituting the Board, they thought they were authorizing these unelected bureaucrats to enforce existing laws, not to make new ones up out of thin air. This would be like going to the doctor for an ear infection and ending up with a vasectomy.

Of course, courts continue to rule that the suppression of issue advocacy during elections is a violation of another obscure constitutional provision, known mostly to scholars as \”The First Amendment.\” Then again, why would the GAB start worrying about our founding documents now?

As their denouement, it appears the GAB is now going to move to suppress free speech before three of their members are even confirmed by the State Senate (as is seemingly required by the law). Three of the members have been confirmed by the Assembly. The Board knows that their appointees would have a difficult time mustering the 2/3rds vote necessary for Senate confirmation if their stated purpose was to regulate campaign speech. So some members may try to serve on the Board and vote to regulate issue ads before the 2009 session begins, when they will require confirmation. It appears they are going to serve almost as if they as “recess” appointments, since the Senate is not currently in session.

As a result of the GAB’s actions, Wisconsin will have an unelected, unconfirmed group of bureaucrats who will be putting themselves in charge of political speech for all upcoming state elections, in violation of their statutory authority. If you think the weeds taking over your front lawn this spring are a problem, that pesky clover has nothing on the Government Accountability Board. Someone needs to get the sprayer out and rein in this out of control board, before it chokes off meaningful political discourse.

-April 11, 2008

I thoroughly enjoyed this piece by Andy Moore (my \”Here and Now\” producer), in which he bemoans the decline in hitchhiking as a standard practice in America:

Hitchhiking is dead. It\’s hard to say which came first, drivers who no longer pick up hitchhikers or people who no longer hitchhike. But I bet you couldn\’t fill a booth at the Rathskeller with college students who have even once thumbed a ride.

It is what it is, but it\’s too bad. A whole generation and, it seems, generations to come will miss out on one of the defining legs of the American journey.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, hitching for me was an aerobics course in expectations. It began with an act of sheer positive thinking, a belief cast in blind faith that complete strangers, traveling in their own arc, would enter my life and take me further on.

There were therapeutic benefits to hitchhiking. Mental-health strategies that people actually pay professionals to learn. Hitching required patience. It demanded you slow down your pace, accept that you\’re not in control of the universe and be okay with that. It asked you to hope for the best and accept disappointment.

While the limit of my patience was tested waiting for rides, I can\’t say I was ever disappointed by my encounters with the people who picked me up. Frightened by them, yup. Intimidated, bored, maybe. Offended, amused, encouraged, and inspired, too.

Oh, and I\’m on the show Friday.

Ever since my trip to the doctor last week, I have made a valiant effort to get my health on. It\’s been a week since I\’ve eaten fast food, and I\’ve run my four mile route four times. I feel like I need to go club some baby seals, just to restore balance to my life. From the depths of my colon, my doctor retrieved the secret to good health – eating right, more exercise, and paint huffing only in moderation.

The eating healthier thing hasn\’t been as bad as I thought it would be. At first, it felt like my best friend had left me. My sweet, delicious, greasy, salty best friend. But when you realize that best friend was secretly plotting to kill you, it makes it a little easier to break up.

The exercise has been much harder. The first day I ran my route, I ended up walking a good part of the last 2 miles. That\’s always so embarrassing, as you feel like the people driving by are laughing at you. There\’s a wicked uphill climb at the end of my route, and I actually tried to motivate myself by saying things out loud, like \”if Kansas can win the national championship, I can make it up this hill.\” In fact, the homeless guy I hired to carry me up the hill thought it was really weird.

But I was stunned at the progress I made after just a couple runs. I can now make it the whole route without hearing the Reaper\’s footsteps behind me. I\’m still afraid to step on a scale, though. I\’m afraid that when the scale sees me coming, it will scurry out of the room. (This has now offically become my audition to start writing \”Cathy\” cartoons.)

So the next time any of you see me, don\’t be shocked when you see that I have the body of Adonis. My next project is to become three inches taller.

I\’m just finishing up Charles R. Cross\’ excellent but intensely depressing biography of Kurt Cobain, entitled \”Heavier than Heaven.\” It\’s an unflinching look at Cobain that doesn\’t spare any detail about his drug use, cruelty, and selfishness. And now I\’m completely bummed out.

Reading this book has kind of given me a glimpse of how book reading will probably be in the near-future. I read a big chunk of it while hooked up to the internet and logged on to YouTube. So when something happens in the book, rather than taking the author\’s word for what it was like, you can often go right to the clip and see for yourself.

For instance, take the time when Nirvana appeared on the British \”Top of the Pops\” show. The producers made the band play \”Smells Like Teen Spirit\” over a pre-recorded sound track, while Kurt sang live. Not quite lip-synching, but close. This irritated Cobain, so he made a mockery of the performance, performing it in a crooner-type style. After the performance, the band had to scramble out of the studio, as the show\’s producers were livid. Later, Kurt said he was merely trying to pay tribute to Morrissey.

Thankfully, in one click, I was able to find the clip:

You can also find a now-infamous clip from British television where Kurt announces that Courtney Love is the\” greatest f*** in the world.\”

This seems to be an interesting opportunity book publishers can use to augment their written texts. When they publish a book, they could have video clips and other materials online to broaden the readers\’ experience. In fact, when I finally write my book exposing Cap\’n Crunch as a war criminal, I\’ll be sure to provide plenty of online supplementation.

Some other observations, as long as we\’re on this topic:

I\’m not really clued in to how books like this are written, but I imagine it takes a lot of cooperation from friends and family of the subject. As a result, the book gives a fairly glowing assessment of Courtney Love. I imagine she allowed Cross access to all of Kurt\’s materials, and it appears the author may have taken it easy on her as a result. This, after all is a woman who admittedly used heroin before, during, and after her pregnancy. While Kurt was missing the week before he killed himself, Courtney was trolling drug houses looking for more heroin, instead of searching for her suicidal husband. All of this is mentioned, but only briefly. (At one point, Cobain\’s manager is quoted as saying something like \”it\’s so unfair that people think you can\’t be an addict and a good parent at the same time.\”)

People forget that Courtney Love essentially wrote the blueprint for the drug-addled, self obsessed train wrecks that we see today in the likes of Britney Spears. She was a crazy addict before it was cool. In fact, the Foo Fighters are still good for one anti-Courtney song per album. (\”How can it be/I\’m the only one who sees/your rehearsed insanity,\” from \”I\’ll Stick Around,\” for instance.)

What also struck me while reading the book is that the Nirvana Era might be the last time we\’ll see the best music being made that also happens to be the most popular music in the world. Since then, the music industry has fractured, with many of the best acts having to settle on being marketed to niche audiences. One could argue that Radiohead has gotten close, and I\’m not too much of a music snob not to appreciate some of Dave Matthews\’ best work, but I can\’t think of a recent time when critical and commercial praise were so far apart (with all apologies to Lou Bega.) I am open to being debated about this.

The book also briefly details Nirvana\’s time in Madison, where they laid down some of the first tracks that would eventually become the \”Nevermind\” album – widely considered one of the best albums of the past 25 years. It blows my mind that somewhere in Madison, these tapes are sitting there collecting dust. For music fans, these tapes are like the Shroud of Turin – and they\’re right here in Wisconsin. This should be front page news every day. If these were the original tapes for \”Abbey Road\” or something, Madison would be crawling with poorly dressed Europeans, pining for a peek at them. I demand that the State Historical Society recognize this fact and that we get a day off from work in remembrance.

It\’s also remarkable that the three month-old baby featured on the cover of the Nevermind album is now 17 years old. Spencer Elden\’s Wikipedia page says he was accepted to Princeton for next year (so it must be true). Oddly, I feel some strange affinity for this kid. Not like he\’s my child, but the child of my generation. So I wish him the best in college, as long as he doesn\’t call me and ask for beer money.

UPDATE: A friend e-mails me with a story about the Nevermind tapes in Madison:

\”An old friend/acquaintance of mine who had a band was doing some recording at Smart Studios. He invited me and another friend to the studio. He showed us around, and was talking about all the amps they had that they could just grab and use for the recording. Then he showed us the tape archives. He picked up this tape and said look, this is the original tape of the Nirvana Nevermind sessions. It was labeled Nirvana Master Tape or something like that. The tape was just sitting there on the shelf, like the CD\’s in my basement.\”

For 34 years, I\’ve tried to live a good life. I\’ve (often times) been kind, courteous and giving. Yet this video alone has shaken my belief that God exists. I can forgive typhoid fever and tsunamis. But no benevolent being would ever allow people to see this:

On the one hand, this makes me want to go vote for Obama. But on the other hand, I now know what being a Vietnamese prisoner of war must be like.

MAJOR UPDATE: The McCain Girls have a special, heartfelt message for me.

Back in 2006, the proposed Wisconsin smoking ban was still a hot issue. Those of us working in the Legislature had to field all kinds of calls from people angry that the government was going to take away their right to smoke in bars. Generally, these calls came from people physically present in a bar at the time of the call.

The real gems, however, were the voice mail messages you heard in the morning, when you got into work. Inevitably, some guy would call from his barstool and leave a completely incoherent message at 2 AM.

Here\’s the best one I heard, from the voice mail of now-deposed State Senator Ron Brown. At the time, Brown had sent out a newsletter looking for input on the smoking ban, and this gentleman would like to register his feelings on the matter. This is just one of many that we heard, and I assure you it is 100% representative of the anti-smoking ban calls that we got.

The audio is a little rough, since it was taken off an office phone, but stick with it. And it is not safe for work, unless you work in a bar.

The anti-smoking forces have to be shaking in their boots with a lobbying effort like this. Nice to see this guy exercising his right to petition his government for the redress of grievances. Unfortunately his grievance happens to be the desire to get BLAZED!

So within the same week, my sister gets home from Iraq and her alma mater, the Kansas Jayhawks, win the national championship. Not bad.

More importantly, I picked Kansas to win when I filled out my bracket, which was the only thing I managed to do right. After two rounds, I was ranked 92nd in a pool of 104 teams. With the KU win tonight, I finished a respectable 26th – although dead last among people who picked Kansas to win.

And while Derrick Rose is probably crushed at the Memphis loss tonight, just imagine how excited he\’ll be later in the year when he\’s drafted by the Bucks.

(Actually, I take that back – someone might want to make sure there aren\’t any sharp objects near him on draft night.)

Oh, and Billy Packer is still an insufferable prick. That\’s just a little bonus observation.

For months now, I have passed the frozen foods section of our grocery store with an eye on a product that it seems couldn\’t possibly be any good: White Castle microwavable burgers. But having put down six Whiteys sliders after a concert in Chicago a few weeks ago, I thought it was time to give them a try, if only for the sake of my own amusement.

Surprisingly, they\’re not really all that unhealthy. 17 grams of fat per two burgers, which is the same amount as one hot dog. You have to wrap a pack of two burgers in a paper towel, and microwave them for 60 seconds.

Admittedly, when I first had the idea of doing this post, I thought I was going to go into great detail about how disgusting they are. But I have to admit – they\’re actually not half bad. Perhaps the main benefit they have going for them is that the actual food they are meant to replicate is so bad to begin with. Whiteys sliders are good for a 3 AM after bar meal, but aren\’t exactly a delicacy at noon. So because the bar is so low to begin with, they actually meet it easily.

In fact, given the microwave directions, the heating is just perfect. The meat gets hot, while the bun warms up, but doesn\’t get soggy. Naturally, you\’re better off having plenty of ketchup nearby to make the taste more tolerable.

So if you\’re looking for a 60 second snack that takes you back to the old days of getting hammered at the bars and scavenging for food (\”old days\” = \”last week\”), you could do a lot worse than White Castle frozen burgers.

Four out of five trousers.

I\’m working on a couple hours of sleep, but I feel like I should say something about last night\’s elections.

First, I am positively giddy about the Frankenstein Veto Constitutional Amendment passing. As many people know (and as I have been happy to mention about 20 times), I worked for the State Senator who authored this amendment at the time she initially introduced it. And while the amendment passing with 70% of the vote makes it seem like a no-brainer, consider this: the bill\’s authors got a Democratic Senate to vote for a constitutional amendment to limit the veto authority of a governor from their own party. It\’s hard for people to understand how much of a long shot that was. But in the end, reason won out. Arguments actually carried the day. Yesterday was a day that people could truly be proud of their Legislature, both parties included.

With such a big project, there are a number of people that deserve to be thanked. First, State Senator Sheila Harsdorf for introducing and pushing for the bill. Her staffers Jack Jablonski and Matt Woebke for crafting the strategy (Jablonski was able to overcome his mental defect of being a Viking fan and actually do some great work). Senator Scott Fitzgerald and his staff, including the now-departed Mike Prentiss, who is now practicing his vigilante brand of public relations in Cincinnati. State Representatives Don Friske and Jeff Stone pushed for the bill in the Assembly, with their staffs Tim Gary and Michael Pyritz. And yes, Democratic Senators Russ Decker and Fred Risser deserve credit for standing up to their governor and passing this restriction on his power.

As for the other races, I\’m not sure what I have to say. I\’m still stunned about Mike Gableman\’s Supreme Court win. When I sort out what I think, I\’ll probably post them over at the WPRI blog.

However, the biggest win of the night was Jill Didier\’s victory as mayor of Wauwatosa. I take 100% full credit for this win, and I expect to be offered a high-level job in the Didier administration. I will just sit here and wait for my phone to ring.

….

Nothing yet…

….

UPDATE: My thoughts on the Supreme Court race are up at the WPRI Blog.
Any minute now…

As hour two of Sunday\’s Jens Lekman concert started, I could only think of two things: 1. Do Swedish people really dance that badly?, and 2. Where\’s the bathroom? You see, for the last week or so, I have had to \”go\” constantly.

At first, I thought this might just be a by-product of getting old. I\’ve never been in my mid-30\’s before, so how am I supposed to know how often someone that age has to pee? The rest of my body aches, why would my prostate be any different? I just accepted that I had the bladder of a 132 year-old nun and decided to move on.

I talked to another friend of mine who is the same age, and he said he was having the same problem. I hate going to the doctor, so I told him to go see a doctor and find out what I have. At the very least, I was hoping I had a tapeworm, since it\’s nice to have someone to talk to occasionally. I could buy him a little Brewer hat and take him to baseball games and such.

Finally, I relented, and today I went to see the doctor. When they asked for a urine sample, I just pulled out one of the samples that I keep in the trunk of my car. Who knows when it could have been from.

Even as I dreaded the exam which I knew was coming, there were more surprises. Apparently, for the first time in my life, my blood pressure was a little high. It wasn\’t fatally high, but I had moved out of the \”circulation of a f\’ing racehorse\” phase to which I had become accustomed. Even when I started putting on weight, I could always fall back on the fact that my veins were golden. In that respect, I was deceptively fat. Chunky but fit.

So this was really a shock to find out that the innards are starting to go. My body\’s kind of like an old Ford Pinto – a little rough on the exterior, but the engine of a Ferrari. But now my doctor was telling me my spark plugs aren\’t firing the way they used to. I attribute this to my attempt to set the world caloric intake record from the beginning of the NCAA tournament to now.

As part of the exam, they made me step on the scale. The digital number that came up was a number that had previously been unknown to me. I quickly tried to calculate the weight of my boots, belt, wallet, phone, clothes, hair gel, and sandwich I had for lunch. Even if I was carrying a bowling ball in my pants (not unlikely, incidentally), I was still about ten pounds on the scary side. So either I\’m fat or my tapeworm now weighs ten pounds.

During part of the exam, the doctor started asking some pretty personal questions. He asked if there was any blood in my stool. \”No, not accidentally,\” I said. Then things got touchy:

Him: \”Are you sexually active?\”

Me: (Fighting off urge to make a joke) \”Uhhhh, yeah.\”

Him: \”With your wife?\”

Now what the hell kind of question is that? I totally should have said, \”No, actually with your wife.\”

Naturally, nobody wants to know the actual remaining details of the exam. They are what they think you are. I generally have an \”exit only\” policy for my rear, but it\’s really more of a guideline than a rule. I was hoping he\’d find a t-shirt I\’d been missing in there, but no luck.

As it turns out, I do have some sort of prostate/bladder infection. They sent me down to the pharmacy to get some pills that the pharmacist told me might make my eyes extra-sensitive to light. I threw the pills on the desk and yelled, \”But they\’re for my grumpy wiener, not my eyes!\” The cops then escorted me out.*

I just wanted to mention this as the beginning of the end for me. I\’m heading downhill from here. Keep this post in mind when I am inevitably found keeled over dead while in line at the Culver\’s drive through. (Anyone who dies at a McDonald\’s runs the risk of becoming part of the menu.)

Sadly, there will be no telethon for people like me. It is the bladder infection victims who suffer quietly, often with their legs crossed, afraid to cry for help. When aid is finally given to these poor souls, it is often too late – and a mop and bucket on aisle 6 is necessary.

Fortunately, I hear there are pills you can buy online to help your wiener. I don\’t care if it takes months; I am going to hunt down one of these rare pill buying opportunities and turn my life around.

Oh, yeah – and the Jens Lekman show was good. Here\’s a song of his:

*-This did not happen.

I have been booked to appear as a guest on Milwaukee Public Television\’s \”Fourth Street Forum\” show, which films on April 10th. It airs on MPTV on April 11, then again on April 13th.

The subject of the roundtable is \”Wisconsin Taxes? What\’s Enough? What\’s Fair?\” Other guests include State Representative Jason Fields, State Senator Mary Lazich and Jack Norman from the Institute for Wisconsin\’s Future.

Fortunately, they podcast full episodes of the show – so in the highly unlikely event that you miss it, you\’ll be able to go online and catch it.