Political Oppression in Wisconsin

[Belz...]

Ends justify the means, eh?

Civil rights should be for everyone. Not just our friends.

Party before civil rights, huh?

What part of:

I do hope enough can be proved to put all his like in jail.

escaped your notice ? I thought Fuelair was talking about due process.

 

[Ziggurat]

What part of:

I do hope enough can be proved to put all his like in jail.

escaped your notice ? I thought Fuelair was talking about due process.

What part of

Walker is a piece of **** with no human feelings and whatever bad happens to him and his ilk is less than they deserve.

escaped your notice? Fuelair was definitely NOT talking about due process. And the post he responded to specifically detailed ways that the John Doe process discarded standard due process, which Fuelair made clear he doesn't object to.

 

[The Big Dog]

What part of:

escaped your notice ? I thought Fuelair was talking about due process.

I was obviously talking about the civil right of being free from unreasonable searches and seizures, such as predawn SWAT raids.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Due process does not require that a John Doe witness be advised of the nature of the proceeding or that the witness is a “target” of the investigation. Ryan v. State, 79 Wis. 2d 83, 255 N.W.2d 910 (1977).

http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/968/265

 

[Ziggurat]

stops me if I am wrong but john does investigation are onyl ivnestigation. It is not john doe prosecution. They are done to avoid that the target manipulate witness and evidence, and that is a real concern with politician.

First, Walker wasn't the target here, non-politicians were. Second, manipulating evidence and witnesses is already illegal, if someone is willing to break this law for a normal investigation, why wouldn't they be willing to break the law for a John Doe investigation?

But one the investigation is done, as far as i can tell from what I read , this become a normal procedure with evidence and testimony shown to the defense.

Once it reaches trial, maybe. But here's the thing: the process itself is punishment. Armed raids on your home, what amounts to theft of your property, all of this happens before any of the protections of the trial process. And it does real harm to the targets of that investigation. It doesn't matter if they can be acquitted at trial, it doesn't even matter if it never goes to trial: the process has already punished them. And it's done so in a way that they can't defend against, and where the prosecutors are unaccountable for abuses of the process.

That's just ****** up.

If my understanding is correct, then this is no different from many normal investigation where you investigate trying to avoid the knowledge of your target.

Your understanding is not correct, it's completely different. You aren't trying to keep knowledge of the investigation secret from the target, you're preventing the target from talking even if he knows. You can do armed raids on his home, while he's there, seize his property, and he can't say a damn thing to anybody.

I get the feeling that the protest about that laws tells more about wow you feel about the target of that investigation... And if the political role was reversed a lot of protester would suddenly be far more silent.

Perhaps that's true of some people, but it's not actually relevant. Regardless of the self-interested motives of anyone complaining about the John Doe process, the complaints themselves are valid.

 

[sunmaster14]

What part of:



escaped your notice ? I thought Fuelair was talking about due process.

Oh, please. Fuelair's idea of due process is taking somebody he thinks is a terrorist, or a political opponent (but I repeat myself), and slowly feeding him into a woodchipper.

 

[sunmaster14]

Yeah, Republicans aren't corrupt. Come on.

Some are, some aren't. I think EG3000 was referring to Walker, however, and so far there isn't much evidence that he's corrupt.

 

[sunmaster14]

<snip>

Perhaps that's true of some people, but it's not actually relevant. Regardless of the self-interested motives of anyone complaining about the John Doe process, the complaints themselves are valid.

Let's not lose sight of the worst thing about the John Doe investigation in this case. That it was used to chill political speech. Coupling campaign finance laws, which already infringe on free speech rights, with John Doe type investigations is a recipe for political oppression, and that's exactly what happened to conservatives in Wisconsin.

 

[thaiboxerken]

In a nutshell: (in John Doe 2) prosecutors from both political parties investigated whether Walker's campaign and issue groups acted in coordinated fashion, in violation of campaign finance laws.

Then the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the activities in question were not illegal. Takes care of that.

Pretty much, even though several of the WSC justices should have recused themselves from the proceeding.

 

[Belz...]

What part of

escaped your notice? Fuelair was definitely NOT talking about due process.

Only because you snipped the part I posted. If I say "I hope the bastard goes to court and gets sent to jail", and you snip the first part to imply that I think he should be sent to jail without a trial, I'd hope others would notice too.

 

[Belz...]

Oh, please. Fuelair's idea of due process is taking somebody he thinks is a terrorist, or a political opponent (but I repeat myself), and slowly feeding him into a woodchipper.

That may be the case (and, ouch !) but I don't see that in the post you guys quoted.

 

[Ziggurat]

Only because you snipped the part I posted.

Just like you snipped the part that I posted?

If I say "I hope the bastard goes to court and gets sent to jail", and you snip the first part to imply that I think he should be sent to jail without a trial, I'd hope others would notice too.

Fuelair made it quite clear that he didn't just want Walker et al. to go to court. He wanted them to suffer during the investigation itself, because the suffering itself was an end from his point of view.

 

[Belz...]

Just like you snipped the part that I posted?

No, not quite like it. The part _I_ posted makes the part you posted mean something different. I think that's important.

Fuelair made it quite clear that he didn't just want Walker et al. to go to court. He wanted them to suffer during the investigation itself, because the suffering itself was an end from his point of view.

I'll let Fuelair tell us what he really wants. I'm just saying that I don't support your interpretation of his post for the reasons I stated.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Take it up with the Republican Special Prosecutor looking into serious allegations of corruption involving Scott Walker. He said this recently...




Again, that is from The Special Prosecutor who led the probe, Francis Schmitz--a Republican who voted for Walker in 2012.

This has been discussed in the other John Doe investigation thread. That Francis Schmitz claims to be a Republican is almost as irrelevant as his completely unverifiable claim that he voted for Walker in 2012. That he even would use that as a defense against accusations of prosecutorial misconduct is yet more evidence that he's a loon.

Schmitz started his legal career as a clerk for federal judge John Coffey, a Reagan appointee who the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described as "an unyielding conservative." Schmitz worked for years as a federal prosecutor, receiving two awards from the U.S. Department of Justice, including the prestigious "U.S. Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service" from Republican Michael Mukasey. Schmitz was on George W. Bush's shortlist to be named the chief federal prosecutor in the state as U.S. attorney, and he served in the U.S. Army and in the U.S. Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of Colonel.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/04/12816/scott-walker-GOP-prosecutor-john-doe

 

[Frank Newgent]

In a nutshell: (in John Doe 2) prosecutors from both political parties investigated whether Walker's campaign and issue groups acted in coordinated fashion, in violation of campaign finance laws.

Then the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the activities in question were not illegal. Takes care of that.

Pretty much, even though several of the WSC justices should have recused themselves from the proceeding.

Article from latest The New Yorker addresses one of those judges:

To understand how the Wisconsin court came to this decision, Gableman is the ideal justice to focus on. As an undistinguished county trial judge, he was recruited by business organizations to run against Louis Butler, a liberal and the court’s only black member, in the 2008 election. He narrowly won, giving the conservatives a majority, in a campaign so ugly that the Wisconsin Judicial Commission brought charges against Gableman for “reckless disregard for the truth.” He had run TV ads that gave the false impression that Butler had tried “to put criminals on the street.” (In two reviews of the charges, Gableman was not sanctioned for reasons better explained by politics than logic.)

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group in Wisconsin, Gableman would not have been elected without the support of Wisconsin Club for Growth, the state arm of the national Club for Growth, and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These two groups spent a total of $2.75 million on so-called issue ads during the campaign, more than five times what the Gableman campaign spent. They are, as the center noted, the “same groups that allegedly coordinated with Walker and brought the challenge to these coordination rules.”

The special prosecutor formally asked Gableman to recuse himself from deciding the case about the John Doe investigation, based on the well-established principle that a judge should disqualify himself if his impartiality can be reasonably questioned. (The prosecutor also asked that another justice recuse himself, for the same reasons.) But under a recusal rule proposed by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, among other groups, and adopted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in 2009, by a 4–3 conservative-liberal split, a justice need no longer recuse himself because he received campaign contributions from, or was the beneficiary of, “independent” spending by a person or group seriously affected by the case.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/scott-walkers-wisconsin-and-the-end-of-campaign-finance-law

 

[Frank Newgent]

It's sad to see so much partisanship when this (John Doe investigations violate civil rights) should be an easy topic for both left and right wing posters to agree on.

The legal issues before the Court involved the scope of Wisconsin campaign finance law and procedural issues surrounding the John Doe. Although right-wing media outlets have hyperventilated for months about the "paramilitary style raids" allegedly used in the investigation, WiCFG director Eric O'Keefe and others that have filed a barrage of lawsuits against the investigation never challenged the methods used in executing the search warrants.

Former prosecutors and law enforcement professionals have said that the methods used were not abnormal for investigating white-collar crime.

Yet the Wisconsin Supreme Court's right-wing justices couldn't help but repeat inflated claims made by right-wing media outlets. Justice Gableman denounced the "pre-dawn, armed, paramilitary-style raids in which bright floodlights were used to illuminate the targets' homes." Justice Annette Ziegler devoted her entire concurrence to opining about the constitutionality of the alleged tactics used in executing search warrants, even though the Court never conducted any factual findings about the matter and never held oral arguments where the issue might have been addressed.

"I was denied the opportunity to appropriately respond to the campaign of misinformation about how and why the investigation was conducted," Schmitz said in a statement. "All of these search warrants were audio-recorded and it is wrong for the court to accept as true the information alleged by some of the Unnamed Movants and their media outlets."

In the absence of a genuine factual record, Ziegler and Gableman instead relied on highly-conflicted right-wing news outlets for their "facts."

Perhaps the most extraordinary example was the Court's multiple citations to the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity's "Wisconsin Watchdog" website. That outlet has produced 222 stories attacking the John Doe but without routinely disclosing that it was launched and funded by Eric O'Keefe, WiCFG's director and the chief plaintiff in the lawsuits challenging the probe. Franklin Center's president Jason Stverak used to work for O'Keefe. Its Director of Special Projects, John Connors, is also president of Citizens for a Strong America, another group involved in the investigation and which is funded entirely by WiCFG.

Additionally, Franklin Center/Wisconsin Watchdog's funding has come in large part from the Bradley Foundation, which is led by Walker campaign chair Michael Grebe. The Court also cited a sensational National Review article on the John Doe "raids" by David French, the past president of the Foundation on Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which received more than $1.3 million from the Bradley Foundation since 1999.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31956-five-things-to-know-about-the-scott-walker-john-doe-ruling

 

[Giz]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31956-five-things-to-know-about-the-scott-walker-john-doe-ruling

Sad to see people trying to defend the indefensible. The spirit of the inquisitors lives on.

 

[Frank Newgent]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31956-five-things-to-know-about-the-scott-walker-john-doe-ruling

Sad to see people trying to defend the indefensible. The spirit of the inquisitors lives on.

Explain?

 

[The Big Dog]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31956-five-things-to-know-about-the-scott-walker-john-doe-ruling

Lolz! You just cited "truth-out" complaining about partisanship?

Did you do that ironically or were you serious?

Either way? Freaking hilarious!

 

[sunmaster14]

Schmitz started his legal career as a clerk for federal judge John Coffey, a Reagan appointee who the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described as "an unyielding conservative." Schmitz worked for years as a federal prosecutor, receiving two awards from the U.S. Department of Justice, including the prestigious "U.S. Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service" from Republican Michael Mukasey. Schmitz was on George W. Bush's shortlist to be named the chief federal prosecutor in the state as U.S. attorney, and he served in the U.S. Army and in the U.S. Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of Colonel.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/04/12816/scott-walker-GOP-prosecutor-john-doe

I have bolded a portion of the excerpt you quoted from your source to show you just how untrustworthy it is. See the discussion here. Schmitz was not one of Bush's choices, but rather one of the choices of a committee selected by two Democratic senators and one Republican congressman that was forwarded on to Bush (who then decided not to appoint Schmitz).

As 16.5 points out above, it is hilarious to cite partisan sources as evidence for how other sources are partisan. It's doubly hilarious that you cite as evidence something that has already been debunked in the main thread on the John Doe investigation. I'll note further that although Schmitz complains bitterly about how the Wisconsin Supreme Court shouldn't have disparaged his investigation by citing certain facts about the armed searches of private homes that he authorized, because they had not been properly placed in the court record, he does not actually deny those facts. Nor do your partisan sources actually. That pretty much tells you that those facts are indeed facts.