Center for Media and Democracy and Common Cause file suit against 5 Republican lawmakers

Earlier today the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause (CC) filed suit against five Republican lawmakers, alleging those five Republicans failed to provide ALEC-related records sought under Wisconsin’s Open Records Law.

Here’s the press release issued by CMD and CC. The Center for Media and Democracy and Common Cause filed suit today [...]

Become a political ad sleuth in Wisconsin

One of the things I’ve long wondered about all those shady third-party political action groups that have sprung up in the wake of Citizens United is where exactly they get their funding from. It’s no secret billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have spent millions of dollars to help further the conservative cause [...]

Is Supervisor Peggy Romo West using text messaging to avoid transparency?

On Wednesday I wrote about Milwaukee County Supervisor Peggy Romo West’s use of text messaging to fire her Legislative Aide. At the time I noted that Sup. West was playing “hard to get” when it came to answering very specific questions I had regarding the frequency of her use of text messages to conduct County [...]

Let’s play the Peggy West guessing game!

On April 25, 2012 Milwaukee County Supervisor Peggy Romo West terminated the employment of her Legislative Aide (LA). While Romo West’s termination of her now-former LA isn’t necessarily newsworthy, what’s curious about the termination is how Supervisor Romo West chose to terminate her Legislative Aide’s employment.

So how exactly did Supervisor Romo West fire her [...]

Transparency? Not in the Republican version of Wisconsin!

Here are the doors to the Wisconsin State Assembly gallery, blacked out on March 13, 2012 to prevent the citizenry from observing/filming/photographing the police arresting other citizens.

Photo courtesy Leslie Amsterdam

Not surprisingly, Wisconsin’s spending transparency earned a D-minus Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, which found that the state’s online checkbook is difficult to [...]

Scott Walker’s “transparent” government

So much for Gov. Scott Walker’s promise to make his administration a model of transparency. I previously mentioned Gov. Walker’s administration is being sued for failing to respond to several open records requests, and while his administration has now responded to the records requests, they’re clearly attempting to stonewall the requests, estimating the cost of [...]

Ron Paul defends WikiLeaks

Rep. Ron Paul might be the only elected official in the nation defending WikiLeaks: “In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth,” Paul said. “In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.”

“This is media, [...]