Partisanship and the Wisconsin Supreme Court

We’ve all got our ways of making up our minds.

Horoscopes. Gut feelings. Snippets overheard at the water cooler. Long, tedious hours of research.

And finding out what others think. If we’ve agreed with someone in the past, or disagreed with them in the past; if they share or oppose our general philosophies, their opinion might – in fact, probably will – influence ours.

Hopefully, that’s more because we trust (or distrust) those people, and less because we’re knee-jerkingly toe-ing a line without really thinking the issue through. Just because we usually agree, doesn't mean we can't disagree.

Even so, have you noticed how we seem to line up the exact same way on every issue? On this side: WMC, CRG, the Republican Party, Charlie Sykes, Vicki McKenna, and a host of conservative bloggers.

On that side: WEAC, the unions, GWC, OWN, the Democratic Party, most newspaper editorial boards, and a host of liberal bloggers.

Most of us will, quite predictably, line up with one of those sides or the other.

It’s not universal, but it’s a solid bet. And, considering the incredible range of issues out there, it’s odd that this seemingly-automatic lining up should be such a solid bet. You’d think the lines would be a little more permeable.

Let’s take an example. Just randomly pick one. Oh, let’s say…the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

This particular battle in the Pundits’ War has been, with exceptions, fought along the usual lines. And it’s been fought over very small patches of ground. Campaign contributions; TV ads; endorsements; specific statements made years ago that may or may not have any relevance today.

Fought, re-fought, and re-re-fought, ad-nauseam, over every tiny syllable in every obscure paragraph, until I wonder how anybody can even see through all the flying mud.

And we're not even touching on what should be the bottom line: that the Supreme Court exists to interpret the law. Act as arbiter for disagreements over the law.

I want to know which candidate will do that best.

So how do we know what the law is?

The generalizations go like this: conservatives think the law is what’s actually written down, in the Constitution, in statutes and ordinances, in the precedents set by other and past Courts.

Liberals think that’s too constraining.

This year’s “liberal” candidate for Supreme Court is The Hon. Louis Butler. Given some of his past rulings, the label seems to fit.

For example, it’s always been a rule of thumb that, to be held liable for an injury, you actually have to be provably, directly responsible for that injury. At least in part.

In contravention of all former written law and precedent, though, Butler ruled in favor of presumed group liability in a case involving lead paint. A plaintiff can sue any and all paint companies for injuries incurred, whether or not those companies produced the paint.

Another example: in 1993, we amended the state Constitution to strictly limit types of gambling in our state. In 2003, Governor Doyle signed agreements with several Indian tribes, allowing them to offer games forbidden by the Constitution.

Butler ruled in favor of Governor Doyle and the tribes. What the Constitution said was irrelevant.

I’m not a lawyer. Even if I was, the usual pundits could, right or wrong, honestly or dishonestly, nitpick my criticisms to death.

Ah, but if I’m not a lawyer, and if my criticisms can be nitpicked to death, then how can I be sure I’m right?

Fine. Let’s look at the last Supreme Court election: Annette Ziegler vs. Linda Clifford.

What Society Needs

This was another “conservative” vs. “liberal” election and, like today, the sides lined up exactly as they are today.

Attacks against Ziegler were almost exclusively centered on an ethical misstep – what may have been a normal, if questionable practice; or what may have been an unethical use of her position for personal gain. Depends on whom you’re listening to.

It may have been nothing. Still, it was enough for me to vote against Ziegler. Or it would have been had her opponent not said this:

“I am willing to let the (state) constitution breathe and reflect what society needs in any given context ...." *

This philosophy should make all of us – Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative – recoil in distaste.

How do we know what society needs? Well, duh. It’s obvious. Society needs release from the monopoly of government schools. Statewide vouchers: that’s what we need.

Oh, you disagree?

You must be glad I’m not a Supreme Court Justice, then. At least, not a liberal one.

When Clifford said “what society needs,” she didn’t actually mean “what society needs.” She meant “what I think society needs.” At least, at the present time. You know, depending on the “given context.”

Instead of the written law, Clifford’s rulings were going to depend on her feelings. Which, in turn, depend on whether or not she got a good night’s sleep last night; whether or not her cat puked on the carpet; or whether or not her favorite TV show was canceled.

Without any objective anchor, there’s no way to know how a Justice will rule. If we have no standard for what the law is, then there may as well not be any law. The law becomes whatever those in certain seats of power say it is.

This should be important, regardless of political philosophy or affiliation. And yet, “liberal” organizations and pundits lined up to support Clifford, just like they’ve lined up to support Butler.

Let’s wrap this up.

Conservatives must remember two things: even when sticking strictly to the written law, there can be disagreements over what the law says. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t need the Court.

That means a conservative judge might make a ruling that goes against conservative political philosophy.

Also, a judge can be “activist” in a conservative vein, too. We have to be ready, should a “conservative” judge stop paying attention to the law, even if we like his rulings, to oppose him.

I know: that’ll be hard. And I know: it puts us at a disadvantage, because our liberal brethren aren’t – and maybe won’t – do the same.

But: a Court without objective anchoring is a Court that could be with us one day, and against us the next. A Court without objective anchoring – without the written law – is just a bunch of people wielding power however they see fit.

Sticking with our "side" is irrelevant, compared with avoiding that.

* Sheboygan Press, March 2, 2007 (no longer online)

Why I'll Vote for Gableman

There’s an election next week.

No, really. One week from today. Kinda snuck up on us. Spring elections do that.

Still, you'd think it would have made more noise. There’s a lot on the ballot. A mayoral race here in Baraboo, to start. A constitutional amendment to eliminate the Governor's "Frankenstein Veto."

Both are important, in their own way. But neither is as important as the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

On one side, the Hon. Louis Butler, the incumbent-with-an-asterisk, the liberal choice for Justice.

On the other side, the Hon. Michael Gableman, the “challenger,” a circuit court judge in Burnett County, and the conservative choice for Justice.

I’ve asked this before: What have we come to when a conservative judge is one who strictly observes the law, and a liberal judge is one willing to ignore the law?

Haven’t gotten an answer to that yet. Probably won't.

Thus far, Storyline #2 in this election has been the money: Butler has out-raised and out-spent Gableman by about two to one, but “outside groups” have independently spent about twice as much as both of them combined.

Storyline #1 has been the nastiness: both sides slinging mud by the bucketful, fairly or not, just to make sure they're not the only ones who need a shower.

Gableman's campaign wants to prove that Butler is soft on crime. Butler's campaign want to prove that Gableman is a lying racist.

The racist part, I’m not even going to address. It’s standard leftist boilerplate: any candidate the Left doesn’t like is automatically a racist, and they’ll think of a reason later.

Lying? The consensus, even on the Right, seems to be that one of Gableman’s TV ads was at least misleading and misplaced: it hit Butler for helping get an accused sex offender released – temporarily – during which time the offender offended again.

Even if that was accurate, it's irrelevant. Butler was a public defender at the time. It was his job to get the guy out, if he could.

My question for the Gableman campaign: why do that, when Butler's more recent career is such a target rich environment?

Why not point out, over and over again, that the one time Butler ran for Supreme Court, he got beat – schooled – two to one by a “conservative” judge? Rejected, absolutely, unreservedly, by the voters. Point out that Governor Doyle then appointed him to the Court – appointed a man the electorate clearly rejected – once an opening was available.

Why not just label him a liberal, activist judge, and then back that up with the ample examples he himself has provided?

In cases on punitive damages, product liability, casino gambling, criminal justice. Butler has helped to not just tilt the Court leftward: he's shown a willingness to ignore precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the will of the Legislature. The Court has tried to expand its authority over law enforcement and, more recently, over legislative redistricting without basis in law.

As Rick Esenberg put it: "A good judge, like a good umpire, needs to believe that there is a strike zone and that it must be honored." Umpires are the final arbiters in baseball. The Court is our last arbiter of law. When they start ignoring the law…

…well, it's time to get some new judges.

A few years ago, the Hon. Diane Sykes, former member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and current Federal judge wrote:

“The terms “modesty” and “restraint”—the watchwords of today’s judicial mainstream—seem to be missing from the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s current vocabulary. Instead, the court has adopted a more aggressive approach to judging.

And

“The court has also manifested a cavalier, almost dismissive attitude toward the sources of legal interpretation generally thought to be most authoritative: the text, structure, and history of the constitution and laws, and the court’s own precedents.”

Sykes is the judge who beat Butler in 2000, so perhaps her opinion is biased. Butler’s supporters will certainly try to paint her that way, whether they can support it or not.

But we know that this Court, with its slim liberal majority, has become an activist court with little regard to precedent, tradition, the separation of powers or the written law.

Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, we simply can't have that.

We need a change. Vote Gableman.

The Moment You Know

At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

John 20 14-16

I love the NCAA tournament.

I don't even pay attention to basketball, at any level. Oh, the local high schools, a little. And the Badgers, of course. Outside of them, I know next to nothing about college ball.

Siena; Davidson; Austin Peay? I have no idea where these places are. Nor do I care. I had no idea Kansas and UCLA were considered two of the best teams in the nation. Nor did I care.

I care now.

My favorite daydream – this time of year, anyway – goes something like this: I'm the 8th or 9th guy on the team – deep on the bench, usually. Today, because of fouls, or injuries, or both, I'm in.

It's late: only seconds left. We're underdogs, down by two in a game that was never supposed to be close. We have one more chance. There's just enough time for one.

The ball comes in. Dribble to half-court. One pass. Another. Working the ball around the perimeter. A teammate drives – the defense collapses around him. He kicks the ball out, and then it immediately comes to me.

The pass hits my hands. I'm open. Two seconds left. I turn, find the rim. The ball leaves my fingertips. Buzzer. And…

Swish.

And there's a split second: a single moment, before the roar of the crowd hits you, before your teammates mob you, before your arms even finish their motion, that you know.

It was perfect. It was done. You won. And that will last forever.

Or it seems so at the time.

The cool part is, this just happened: some kid from Western Kentucky University – a reserve player who averages 6 points a game – sank a long 3-pointer to upset Drake, in overtime, as the buzzer sounded. The biggest shot in the biggest game of this kid's life.

I wonder if he knew it was good when the shot left his hand, or if he had to wait, like the rest of us, to watch it go in.

Last year, it was Boise St., in the best football game ever. Huge underdogs in the Fiesta Bowl, taking on Oklahoma. Boise St. was winning, and then they were losing, and then they were losing with almost no time left on the clock.

And then they won. And they didn't just win: they won in the most unimaginable way possible.

People remember those moments. Talk about them, years later. They're forever, and yet…they're fleeting.

There's still the rest of your life, whether you made the shot or only watched it. No matter how perfect that moment was, it was only one moment.

And, oh right: those moments go the other way, too. Boise St.'s heroics didn't do much for Sooner fans. Western Kentucky's upset wasn’t exactly uplifting for Drake.

In 2003, the Philidelphia Eagles converted an impossible 4th down play to move on in the playoffs. Fourth and twenty-six. Sound familiar? The New York Giants got to kneel the Superbowl closed this year, but two weeks before that, they watched a game-winning overtime field goal sail through the uprights.

Sound familiar?

Eagles and Giants fans love those moments. Green Bay fans: not so much. That moment of glory cuts both ways.

And they're fleeting. To an extent, we can re-live them. Re-live the excitement for a while. But that's it. There's not much more there.

For example: that kid from Western Kentucky who hit the winning shot? His name is Ty Rogers. It was Boise St. quarterback Jared Zabransky handing off to Ian Johnson in the Fiesta Bowl.

Did you know their names? I bet you didn't. I had to look them up, myself.

Who made the game-winning goal against the USSR in the 1980 Olympics? Name one player on the 1985 Villanova team that upset Georgetown.

Name five Pulitzer Prize winners. Five Nobel Prize winners.

The glories fade. And even if they don't, they don't do all that much good. A little revenue on the lecture circuit; another line on a resume. And even that gets forgotten, eventually.

Okay, not all of them. There is one. One moment; one split-second in which somebody first realized that they'd won. It was done. And it was perfect. And it only cuts one way.

That one, we're celebrating this weekend.

St. Patrick's Day

If you go far enough back in my family tree, third branch from the top, I think – no the little bitty one to the left, there…it's small: careful you don't break it…if you get all the way up to there, you'll find the MacNaughton (or possibly MacNachtan) clan. A Scottish clan, to which I am very distantly related.

They sided with the English against Robert the Bruce, if you know that story, but fought for the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn. Or so I've read.

Anyway, the story goes that the MacNaughton clan was eventually driven forcibly from Scotland into Ireland. Either that, or the next in line for succession just happened to live in Ireland, and so the clan officially moved.

So there you go. I'm Irish. Ergo, St. Patrick's Day is a big deal for me.

Except that it isn't. I did nothing to celebrate yesterday. In fact, this column is the most I've done about St. Patrick's Day in…well, years. Maybe decades. Ever since the teachers at my elementary school started making us all wear green construction-paper shamrocks, so we couldn't pinch each other for not wearing green.

Once that went away, the whole thing lost its luster.

St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, lived in the 5th century A.D., and brought Christianity to the pagans in Ireland after having been enslaved there. March 17 is a Feast Day and a national holiday in Ireland. For Catholics in Ireland, it's also a Holy Day of Obligation. That's no little thing: other HDOs include Christmas Day and the Ascension – the day Jesus ascended to heaven, forty days after rising from the grave.

So you can see that St. Patrick's Day is a big deal, and the Irish make a big deal of it. So do we Americans, my lack of attention to it notwithstanding.

I'm not quite sure why we make a big deal of it: it works fine as an excuse to crack another beer, but…there are so many days and persons special to one country or other, one people or other. How'd this one take root so deeply outside Ireland?

The whole patron saint thing is interesting in itself: many European and African nations have patron saints. The United States does not. That's understandable: we haven't been around for all that long, comparatively, so there just haven't been all that many saints available that had some important connection to us.

Although…could Father Jacques Marquette somehow become a saint? He arrived in Wisconsin in the 17th century, to bring Christianity to the natives. St. Jacques, patron saint of Wisconsin.

Hmmm. I dunno – I think there have to be miracles attributed to the person before they can be sanctified. Something like that. Maybe if the Marquette Golden Eagles make the Final Four this year.

That would be a miracle.

The United States may not have its own saint, but parts of it do. For example, St. Augustine of Hippo is patron saint of Superior, Wisconsin, among other places. His feast day is June 15.

But we don't celebrate him like we do St. Patrick. We celebrate a couple of other saints: Valentine's Day is vaguely connected to a St. Valentine. Christmas, of course, has St. Nicholas.

But St. Patrick's Day is different. It's a Feast Day. A day for St. Patrick, with no other connotations. Because it's so closely connected to the Irish.

And just how did that happen? Were there so many Irish in the States? Was their political lobby that strong? It's a far cry from "No Irish Need Apply," that's for sure. I smell a good old-fashioned American rags-to-riches story.

Cinco de Mayo. That's the closest you can come, I think.

However it happened, it's become a part of the shared culture here. Like trick-or-treating, and turkey for Thanksgiving, and charcoal grills and baseball and the Superbowl, St. Patrick's Day is something we all have in common now, Irish or not.

So, okay, I'm in. I still don't have much in the way of green clothing, though: not even the socks anymore. But I understand you can wear orange, instead, so I can manage.

If hunter's orange counts, that is.

The Do-Nothing, Do-Everything Legislature

Everybody’s mad at the Wisconsin State Legislature today. They’re mad because the Legislature adjourned with “so much work left to be done.”

Well no kidding. They didn't do anything. No concealed carry. No Taxpayer Bill of Rights. No statewide school choice. No elimination of all taxes on business.

Oh, right. That's not what they mean.

The Legislature finished its regular business this week: the Assembly on Wednesday (or, more precisely, Thursday morning); the Senate on Thursday.

Except for special sessions on the budget, and possibly on the Great Lakes Water Compact, the Legislature’s all done. Bills that haven’t been passed by both houses, well, better luck next time.

And everybody’s mad about that – that more bills didn’t get passed. That the Legislature didn’t do more.

The Wausau Daily Herald opines:

Health care reform will have to wait.

So will a statewide smoking ban and a deal to protect Great Lakes water.

Numerous economic development proposals, requiring insurance companies to cover autism, campaign finance reform and solving the state's $527 million budget gap also have been pushed off, although the budget repair bill is the subject of a continuing special session.

The Legislature finished its regular session on Thursday. It will be remembered more for what it didn't do than what it did.

The “People’s Legislature” was aghast. The LaCrosse Tribune was unsatisfied. “It’s Time Wisconsin,” an anti-smoking group, bemoaned that we didn’t pass a smoking ban. “Madison NORML,” a pro-medical marijuana group, lamented that we didn’t lift a smoking ban.

The Assembly Minority Leader himself called the Legislature “do-nothing.”

Of course, that's not true. More than eighty bills have already been signed into law, and there will certainly be more. Lots more. Last session, Governor Doyle signed over 300 bills into law after March 14. And most of them – both then and now – were bipartisan.

What the critics actually mean is: their issues didn't get settled. Whatever specific piece of pork it was they wanted, their maternal protection from harm, their Absolute Need fulfilled and paid for by somebody else.

For lack of a nail, their kingdoms were lost. Or so they see it.

But look at it a different way: the Legislature may not have passed many bills – certainly, much high-profile legislation has gone the way of the dodo this year – but they sure stopped a lot from happening.

Start with the tax increases. Throw in the citizenship rights for illegal aliens. Massive expansions of government-purchased land with no oversight. A complete takeover of health care, coupled, probably, with mandate after mandate on private insurance companies.

The smoking ban. Restrictions on campaign speech. The so-called "Healthy Wisconsin."

For not having done anything, this Legislature did a whole lot.

Here's the rub: a candidate can’t go to the voters without being able to say he/she did…something. You need accomplishments to win re-election. A political party needs accomplishments to promote their candidates.

Too bad. Imagine, for a moment, meeting a candidate for political office. You ask the standard question: “What will you do when you’re in office?”

Now imagine that candidate saying: “Nothing.”

"I won’t pass a single bill."

Would you vote for him? Well, what if he said this: “But by God, I’ll do everything I can to stop the rest of them from doing anything, either.”

Ooooo. Intriguing.

There’s a tradeoff, obviously: there are things we want to happen. School choice. Concealed carry. Tax cuts.

But, we’d just have to do without. We wouldn’t get to look to the government for anything – no more targeted tax credits, statutory tweaks, Official State Tartans and Dog Breeds and Sandwiches.

They might be helpful, useful, good for our quality of life and attractive to tourists, but…tough. Government at a standstill. That's my goal.

They won’t help you with anything anymore – no more than they already are, anyway – but they won’t get in your face anymore, either. No more than they already do.

That’s the compromise: all the things government does now, whether they should be or not, they’ll keep doing. In exchange, they can’t stick it to us any worse. Ever.

Would that get somebody elected? Could it get that somebody re-elected?

Maybe someday we can find out.

The Once and Future Budget Deficit

Very few things are certain in life: there's death, taxes, and the Wisconsin state budget going into deficit about once every two or three biennia.

That's now. We found out in February: the state budget is in deficit by about $650 million. Governor Doyle's first volley of fixes included $100 million in state agency cuts – credit where it's due there – and an accounting gimmick: $125 million in delayed debt payments.

While announcing those measures, Governor Doyle said:

"We will have other tough choices ahead of us," Doyle said in a statement. "We will have to delay spending that everyone agrees is worthwhile. We will have to look for trims everywhere and we will have to make some hard sacrifices and difficult cuts."

But that was February. Yesterday, Governor Doyle announced his plan in more detail, and it’s leaning – heck, it’s fallen all the way over – the wrong way.

It includes:

• Another raid on the Transportation Fund, this time for $243 million (bringing Governor Doyle's total Transportation raid to over $1.3 billion);
  
• A $6 million tax increase on real estate trusts;
  
• An $11 million transfer (raid) on the Universal Service fund;
  
• Another refinance of the tobacco settlement money.

To be fair, it also calls for more cuts to state agencies, but until the actual bill is released and examined, it’s hard to know how much.

And then there’s the hospital tax – yes, a tax on hospitals, which, proponents argue, will "leverage" hundreds of millions more from the federal government.

Yep, just tax our hospitals more and, viola! More federal money appears. From where it appears, well, I dunno. Offshore accounts, I guess. Money they weren’t using before we jumped through this particular hoop.

They’re flush with cash, the Feds. Couch cushions overflowing. And this money is guaranteed. Right? As long as we continue to tax our hospitals, it’ll continue to flow.

Right? And on the chance that the Feds ever change their minds, cut that money, change the rules so we aren’t getting it anymore, then we’ll just do away with the tax, too. I’m sure that’ll be written into Governor Doyle’s bill.

Right.

The "trims," "sacrifices," and "cuts" Governor Doyle warned us about are a little hard to see behind all those transfers, gimmicks, and tax increases.

In fact, these are exactly the kind of tactics – then used by a Republican governor – that helped Governor Doyle become Governor Doyle in the first place.

It’s amazing how fast things can change in just 5 years. Five years ago, Governor Doyle said:

“This budget, like all, relies on some one-time revenue sources. Because one-time sources helped create the current mess, we used them sparingly. …We are using them as part of a long-term plan that results in long-term balance, not a one-time fix that just delays hard decisions. …by the end of this budget, we will have cut state spending enough that we won't have to rely on these revenues any more.”

This is quite a swing on the Governor's part. Now, to be fair, my own opinions once swung considerably over a 5-year span. Between, say, 1988 and 1993. But then, I turned 24 in 1993.

Is that Governor Doyle’s excuse, too?

In fact, the only thing that’s changed for him is the situation. Five years ago, he was governing in the aftermath of the 2001-02 deficits – the multi-billion dollar deficits that were “fixed” through selling off the state’s tobacco settlement, among other things.

Now, he’s Governor, and he’ll use the same damn tricks he reviled back then.

And why? Why, when he had the lesson of past deficits on which to draw, does Governor Doyle continue using the same smoke and mirrors?

Because it’s too hard to do otherwise. It's dangerous, politically. It endangers spending, and that will make people mad. It will make them write letters, and call friends, and print big posterboard signs.

Governor Doyle isn’t running this year, but the Democrats are. His guy – Barack Obama – is, and if Obama’s the nominee, he’ll need Wisconsin to win.

Which means everything’s changed in the last five years. And nothing’s changed at all.

Democrats Crash on Photo I.D.

Let’s start by making an assumption: elected officials are smart people, who have reasons for the things they do.

Both intelligence and design. Seems a bit of a stretch, in this case but let’s just go with it for now.

Why, then, did two Democrat Senators crash a Republican press conference on Photo I.D. yesterday?

Here’s the story: Assembly Joint Resolution 17 would, if it could get through the State Senate, let Wisconsin voters decide whether we should need a state- or federally-issued photo I.D. in order to vote.

If it could get through the State Senate. It can’t. It’s stuck in a Senate committee.

Last week, Sen. Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) attempted to pull the AJR 17 out of that committee and bring it directly to the Senate floor. A common procedural maneuver.

He made the motion, and the Democrats who control the Senate immediately adjourned with neither vote nor debate. Bam. Oh, sorry, were you saying something? See you next week.

Leibham and several others held a press conference yesterday morning to announce their intention to try again. That’s when Sen. Spencer Coggs (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Russ Decker (D-Weston) interrupted them, starting what the press have termed a “shouting match.”

At the very least, this was incredibly rude. You just don’t do it. Put out your own release, or hold your own press conference, but you don’t disrupt somebody else’s. It’s unheard of.

So that was odd. Especially on a day like yesterday, when the whole world was focused on Brett Favre’s retirement. A handful of legislators talking about legislation and referendums might have made page 3 of the Metro section. Might have gotten ten seconds in the state wrapup on the 10 o’clock news. Might have – probably would have – fallen down the rabbit hole, never to be seen again.

Until the Democrats pulled their little stunt. That made sure people would notice.

So. Working under our assumptions of intelligence and design, there are two possibilities: Democrats wanted people to notice something – the press conference – that they otherwise wouldn’t have noticed; or they assumed people would notice it and thus wanted to change the story.

I guess they did that. From the news clips I saw, the two Democrats looked aggressive, sure of themselves. With a few exceptions, the Republicans looked surprised and uncomfortable.

Still, though: the vast majority of Wisconsinites think having to prove you are who you say you are before you can vote is a good idea. They want this legislation. No, it’s not going to be the lynchpin of the next election – the voters won’t be storming the polls in human waves to throw out those who oppose it.

But it will raise eyebrows. When seven out of ten voters support photo I.D., and Democrats oppose it, and Democrats oppose it because, they say, those who support it are racist…

Well, that’ll swing a couple votes. Democrats have not only re-emphasized their position on the fringes of opinion, they’ve done so in a way sure to make the news.

What. The. Hell.

See, if we weren’t assuming intelligence, we could chalk it up to a stupid, ill-conceived stunt. If we weren’t assuming design, we could maybe even chalk it up to chance – something they hadn’t intended to happen, but happened anyway.

But we are assuming intelligence and design.

Which leads me to believe several things: the Democrats know how bad their position on this issue is. They can’t afford to assume the whole thing will just go away, barely noticed. So they’re going with the old political standby: muddying the waters.

Accuse the Republicans of accusing them of divisiveness. They are just so mean-spirited, those Republicans. Can’t just have a civil debate.

Do this while crashing their press conference, because chutzpah sells in politics.

Done right, and with a little luck, and a little media cooperation, you can successfully kill Photo I.D. for – I think it’s the 8th or 9th time now – and simply say the Republicans were being uncooperative jerks who wouldn’t work with the other side.

It’s thin, but it’s something. It gives you an argument, at least. Something you could intelligently, by design, aim to have.

Life After Favre

Nineteen ninety-two was a big year.

My daughter was born – my oldest child. That’s not why it was a big year, of course: I only mention it for context.

She was 134 days old – four months, thirteen days – on September 13 of that year. A button, she was. Bright red curly hair, pudgy cheeks, and a howl that made coyotes cover their ears in pain.

That was the day Brett Favre first saw game action for the Green Bay Packers.

A week later, at 143 days, Favre took over for an injured Don Majkowski and rallied his team to a come-from-behind win.

And one week after that, at 150 days, Favre started his first game.

She’ll be 5,975 days old – settling in to her junior year of high school – when somebody besides Brett Favre finally starts under center for the Green Bay Packers. That’s my daughter. I’ve got three sons, too: none of them have ever seen another quarterback start for Green Bay.

We didn’t know, in 1992, that we were watching the start of a legend.

We didn’t know it, on December 7 of that year. The day Paul Molitor left Milwaukee and signed with the Toronto Bluejays.

Remember that? I do. I was driving up California Highway 1 at the very moment the news broke. Had to pull over for a couple minutes, out of shock.

That was one day after Favre threw for 214 yards and 3 touchdowns (his first 3-touchdown game ever) to beat Detroit 38-10.

Like I said, 1992 was a big year.

Many of us are feeling the very same way today – like we need to stop, pull over, breathe into a paper bag for a while. And we’ll remember where we were when we first heard the news that Favre is calling it a career.

The all-time fumbles record is not to be.

What else will we remember? As another blogger asked: what’s your favorite Favre memory? Your favorite moment?

Mine…well, he used to tell a story about his dog being eaten by an alligator. That’s hard to beat.

I won’t even try. There wasn’t just one moment. It was the aw-shucks southern boy persona. The guy who came into the league a fresh-faced rawboned hick, and who’s leaving the league a gray-bearded rawboned hick.

It was the whole package. The grin. The bristles. The time he jumped over a chipmunk that somehow got onto Lambeau Field, and we all held our breath in case he turned an ankle. The high velocity rifle-passes; the looping bombs; the god-I-can’t-look dives to the corner pylon; the improvised shovel passes with a defensive tackle hanging from his jersey.

Bennett. White. Brooks. Chmura. Freeman. Butler. Brown. Levens. Sharpe. Holmgren. Other than White, none of them are memories in and of themselves. All of them reflect, one way or another, off of Favre. He’s the team. He’s the game.

God, I’m gonna miss him.

So. On to Aaron Rodgers? Um…maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see. He doesn’t exactly fit the theme, does he? Before Favre, there was Majkowski. The name “Rodgers” seems awfully mundane.

Or does the “d” add the necessary oddity?

Rodgers had one good game in a pressure situation – he did play well in relief against Dallas this year, and had a chance to win.

But then he got hurt…in practice.

So I’m not sold. I’m not not sold, either, but you know: whether I’m sold or not is irrelevant.

At least we’re not the Bears. We may not know what’s in store for us, but we don’t have Kyle Orton and Rex Grossman competing for the starting job.

Speaking of which, let’s not just stand pat with Rodgers and Craig Nall. Quarterback is the single most important job on the field. Draft this year. Draft again next year. Don’t stop until you’ve found The Guy.

Or…ah, heck. There’ll never be another guy. Not now that we’re comparing him to Favre. We’ll just have to make do the best we can.

Or…maybe there will be. One legend left us, while another was budding right under our noses. Now that legend is gone, too.

Is there another one? Somewhere? That we don’t even know yet?

Time will tell. Let’s hope it tells soon.