The secret vendetta is over: Free speech wins!

The last echo of the liberal-progressive-socialist intifada against Scott Walker and Act 10 is over. When the vuvuzelas and the recall elections could not undo the will of the people, the Left resorted to using the police powers of partisan prosecutors who employed the intimidation of secret investigations, pre-dawn raids of private homes, and the confiscation of political correspondence.

This morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court put an end to the years-long, Javert-like persecution of conservative voices.

Hal E. Loo-yah!

“It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing.” So said Justice Michael Gableman, writing for the 4–2 majority. (Abrahamson and Crooks dissented; Bradley did not participate.)

“The special prosecutor has not been targeting terrorists or mobsters who impose an imminent danger to society … [but] one of the foundational principles of our nation: the freedom of speech, specifically, political speech.

“It is fortunate, indeed, … that the special prosecutor chose as his targets innocent citizens who had both the will and the means to fight the unlimited resources of an unjust prosecution. Further, these brave individuals played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution.

“Covering up the breathtaking extent of the John Doe investigation through secrecy orders is highly problematic and cannot last.” Read the decision.

A few blogs ago, the ankle-biters were quibbling that the home invasions conducted by the prosecutors were not “pre-dawn.” The decision dispels that prevarication but makes it clear that the tactic was egregious — punitive, really:

“The warrants were executed in the pre-dawn darkness. On October 3 civil twilight began in Madison at 6:29 a.m. and sunrise began at 6:57 a.m. For all practical purposes, each of these searches was the equivalent of a nighttime search. Because no challenge to the warrant execution has been made, the record lacks any explanation as to why law enforcement did not execute the warrants any time during the preceding 66.5 hours — or more specifically, the 29.5 daylight hours — between issuance and actual execution.”

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year declined to take the case, dictating that the matter should be resolved at the state level. Today, it was. Now may the civil damage suits against the prosecutors — Milwaukee D.A. John Chisholm (whose wife is a disgruntled teachers’ union steward), special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, and Government Accountability Board Director Kevin Kennedy (confidant of IRS Lois Lerner) — proceed.

The white lab coats here at the Blaska Policy Werkes are still waiting for the for-profit news corporations to work up a hackle or two over the government assault on the First Amendment speech of the rest of us. Instead, the likes of Chris Rickert accuses victims of the John Doe 2 investigation of “whining.”

Well, they’ve got their free speech, to hell with everyone else’s.

(Continued)

How divisive!

So the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is free to write an editorial titled, "The ever divisive Scott Walker.” It claimed the governor is "the most divisive Wisconsin politician in living memory.”

As if divisive were an indictable offense. Yeah, maybe he and his supporters had the Chisholm-Schmitz-Kennedy persecution coming.

The Journal Sentinel’s token conservative, a struggling young writer named Christian Schneider, issued a necessary corrective.

“Set aside the cranial gymnastics necessary to portray a governor who has won three elections in four years in the birthplace of progressivism as ‘divisive.’ (Also, whose ‘living memory’? Nobody alive remembers Joe McCarthy?)

“Democrats are never portrayed as ‘divisive.’ Like when a president rams a bill that takes over 16% of the American economy through Congress using a procedural gimmick, leading to electoral bloodbaths for Democrats in 2010 and 2014. …  Of course, the charge of ‘division,’ is merely a placeholder for saying, ‘Walker has enacted policies we don’t like.’”

Madison liberal-progressive Mark Pocan hit upon the same stratagem back when conservatives took over the Dane County Board in the early 1990s. Rather than debate the merits, divert attention by crying “squirrel!”

Scott Walker did not make abortion “divisive.” (His defunding Planned Parenthood is looking very good right about now, given the evidence of organ harvesting against PP.) Taxpayers had long resented teachers unions riding roughshod over local school districts. Voters want to know their elections are free of fraud.

You want vanilla pudding, Democrats? Then vote for Lincoln Chaffee. Leaders ARE divisive because they lead instead of meekly following.

Abraham Lincoln was divisive. Literally. The nation was rendered upon his election. Winston Churchill (“We will never surrender.”), Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty or give me death.”), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”) were all divisive, too.

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