No Runny Eggs

Just when you think Team Craps can’t get any slimier and lower, Charlie and Jeff report as their Friday Internet Exclusive Podcast that Team Craps has commenced a whispering campaign to get the two State Supreme Court justices perceived as most likely to vote against Grand Theft Courts, Jon Wilcox and David Prosser, to recuse themselves from the case. If they do so, that would leave the Doylies with, at a minimum, a 3-2 lieberal majority on the SCOW (Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, whose representative on the State Doylie Elections Board was “conveniently” absent when the original highway robbery happened, Ann Walsh Bradley, and Loophole Louis Butler, who owes his seat to Jim “Craps” Doyle).

Just as a reminder, the Doylies had absolutely no problem when Doyle’s (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) personal representative on the Doylie Elections Board, Sherwin Hughes, who owes both his current and future position there solely to Doyle, ignored his conflict of interest to participate in the highway robbery.

JSOnline’s DayWatch is reporting that Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a non-partisan group conglomerate of lieberal special interests whose individual members, almost to a group, support Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale), filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission alleging that Mark Green violated the McShame-Slimeroad Lieberal Protection Act by converting his federal Congressional campaign to a state gubernatorial one. Unlike the State Doylie Elections Board, a majority-owned subsidiary of Team Craps, the FEC is controlled by neither party. In its complaint, WDC, like the state Department of “Justice” and Doylie Judge Niess, specifically ignores that ElBd 1.39, as it existed on January 25, 2005, specifically allowed the conversion of Green’s federal campaign to a state campaign.

Hey Doylies, thanks for taking your best arguments to an entity you don’t control. Here’s hoping you have the same lack-of-success you did in 2000 and 2001.

Revising and extending my comments from yesterday –

Why did the State Doylie Elections Board feel compelled to create emergency rule ElBd 1.935, in an ex-post-facto attempt to strip the Green campaign of $468,000? It is because, back in July 2001, when then-Attorney General and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jim Doyle complained about then-Congressman and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett including out-of-state PAC money in his federal-to-state campaign conversion, they issued Opinion and Order 01-07 that specifically allowed said conversion. The text of the order is exceedingly hard to find, and is only found in two places, including the 1/26/2005 Dunst memo linked earlier (pages 18 and following). I draw your attention to item #6 in the “Conclusions of Law” section (page 23 of the linked PDF file):

6. The conversion of funds received for federal purposes by a federal candidate committee from committees registered with the FEC at the time such contributions are made is not prohibited. The non-resident committee contributors to the Barrett federal campaign committee were not subject to a Wisconsin registration requirement when they made their contribution to the Barrett Committee and are not now subject to a Wisconsin registration requirement because of the conversion of that committee to a Wisconsin personal campaign committee.

This was not successfully challenged by Team Craps. Thus, that opinion, despite what the Doylies wish to believe, was the status of the body of state law on January 25, 2005, when Mark Green converted his federal campaign to a state campaign. Your Doylie Elections Board was a day late and a dollar short.

(H/T – Kathy)

…the Journal Sentinel is reporting that, at the next State Doylie Elections Board meeting on October 4, bought-and-paid-for ‘Rat board member hack Robert Kasieta will seek to go aftter the $775,000 of the Green campaign’s money the state Justice Just Us Department is going after in Doylie Judge Robert Niess’ courtroom. Again, you heard the prediction here first on September 6 –

Here’s a bold prediction; whether the Craps strategy of trying to smear Green while starving his campaign of some funds works or not in the public arena, Craps will try to get his Doylie Elections Board to declare the other $800,000 Green transfered from his federal campaign "illegal" by early October, using the "justification" that federal law prohibits the transfer of state campaign funds.

The last sentence of the order from Dane County District Court Richard Neiss (appointed by Jim Doyle to the bench in 2004) that denies the Green campaign’s request for a temporary injunction (both links from JSOnline) against the State Doylie Election Board’s ruling retroactively declaring $467,884 of the $1.3 million the Green campaign says it all regarding the approach of Team Craps –

The bottom line is that the Elections Board reached the correct result, regardless of the infirmities, if any, in its process.

Allow me to translate – it doesn’t matter whether the state Constitution (specifically, Article 1, Section 12) is violated, just as long as Team Craps and the State Doylie Elections Board gets to commit highway robbery. Morever, the Doylie judge has set up the rationale to complete the full-monty Grand Theft Courts of the $1.24 million the state “Justice” Department now wants to pull off.

Just how is the state Constitituional prohibition against ex post facto laws violated by Team Craps, which now includes a hand-picked judge? First, let’s take a look at the section itself (the annotated version of the state Constitution is linked above):

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation
of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.

Just what is an ex post facto law? The annotated version of the state Constitution defines it as such:

An ex post facto law is one that punishes as a crime an act previously committed, that: 1) was innocent when done; 2) makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission; or 3) deprives one charged with a crime of any defense available at the time the act was committed. State v. Thiel, 188 Wis. 2d 695, 524 N.W.2d 641 (1994).

The annotated verison further goes on to note that this provision applies to judicial pronouncements:

The ex post facto prohibition applies to judicial pronouncements as well as legislative acts. The question to be addressed is whether the new law criminalizes conduct that was innocent when committed. State v. Kurzawa, 180 Wis. 2d 502, 509 N.W.2d 712 (1993).

So, what was the status of state law regarding the conversion of a federal campaign to a state campaign as of January 25, 2005, the date that Mark Green’s campaign made said conversion? Since the State Doylie Elections Board subsequently changed the applicable administrative rule (ElBd 1.39), we have to head to pages 9 and 10 SEB legal counsel George Dunst’s memo of January 26, 2005, where Dunst describes how the administrative rule that applied to a conversion of a federal campaign to a state campaign could be amended to prohibit same. Stripping out the language underlined and restoring the language struck through reveals the status of ElBd 1.39 as of the date Mark Green converted his campaign from a federal one to a state one:

ElBd 1.39 Conversion of federal campaign committee to state committee.

(1) As used in this rule,
(a) “Federal campaign committee” means the campaign committee of a candidate for federal office, which is not registered with a state or local filing officer, and
(b) “State campaign committee” means the personal campaign committee of a candidate for state or local office.

(2) A federal campaign committee may convert to a state campaign committee and use funds collected for federal purposes in a state or local campaign filing a campaign finance registration statement, pursuant to s. 11.05, Stats., with the appropriate filing officer and simultaneously filing a campaign finance disclosure report showing the sources of all funds on hand at the time of the report, pursuant to the requirements of s. 11.06 (1) (a), (b), (c), (d) and (f), Stats. In determining the sources of funds on hand and allocating those funds among the sources, the funds shall be treated on a last-in, last-out basis, so that they will be attributed in the report to the most recent sources, in the full amount received from each source.

Indeed, Judge Neiss acknowleges, as part of the “Undisputed Facts” of his order, that the emergency rule (ElBd 1.395) that the Green campaign seeks relief from did not apply at the time of the conversion (emphasis in the original):

17. On January 25, 2005, Congressman Mark Green converted his federal campaign committee to a state campaign committee by filing a campaign finance registration statement and a campaign finance disclosure report….

19. On January 26, 2005, the Board met for the purpose of, among other matters, discussing the issue of the conversion of federal campaign committees to personal state campaign committees….

20. The Board voted to promulgate an emergency rule (ElBd 1.395). The Emergency Rule was published on or about February 3, 2005….

21. The Emergency Rule states:

ElBd 1.395 Use of funds transferred by a federal campaign committee to a state committee restricted.

Funds which have been converted by a federal campaign committee to a Wisconsin state campaign committee may not be used for political purposes in Wisconsin if the contribution of those funds to the federal campaign committee would not have complied with Wisconsin law if the contribution had been made directly to a Wisconsin campaign committee. The state campaign committee shall divest itself of such money in compliance with s.11.26(11), Stats.

22. Wis. Stat. § 227.24(c) states with respect to emergency rules:

A rule promulgated under par. (a) takes effect upon publication in the official state newspaper or on any later date specified in the rule and, except as provided under sub (2), remains in effect only for 150 days.

The ruling then goes on to justify the denial of the injunction by essentially denying that the version of ElBd 1.39 that existed on January 25, 2005 ever existed. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t profess to play one on the Web, but that sure looks like a violation of the state Constitution to me. Of course, we all know what the state Constitution means to Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) and his Craps-packed State Supreme Court.

(H/T – Elliot)

Somehow I don’t think that a “random” assignment of cases brought the Green challenge to the State Doylie Elections Board to Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess. After all, there’s this little tidbit in today’s Journal Sentinel story –

Doyle named Niess a judge in 2004.

No wonder why Team Craps is now going for the full-monty Grand Theft Courts.

On November 7, remember to say, “And all of Craps’ horseshit, and all of Craps’ men, couldn’t put the USS Jim Doyle back together again” as you vote for Mark Green, JB Van Hollen, and your local Legislative Pubbie.

You have to hand it to Team Craps for total chutzpah – JSOnline’s DayWatch is reporting that state Justice Department lawyers Michael Bauer, Christopher Blythe and Lara Sutherlin argued in court that the Green campaign should be forced to give back $1.26 million of the $1.3 million and be allowed to keep only the $43,128 they say state law allows any candidate committee to give a gubernatorial candidate.

For you budding (or recovering) lawyers out there, JSOnline happens to have the Team Craps brief, but not the Green Team’s ones. WisPolitics’ Courtwatch, however, comes through with the Green Team’s appeal as well as a supporting affadavit from the Green campaign treasurer. I don’t have the time at the moment to sift through all of that, but I will if anybody feels like commenting.

Ignoring the fact that, among other things, Tom Barrett transfered much more than $43,128 to his gubernatorial campaign from his congressional one without so much as a peep from the Doylies or anybody else, let’s see if Team Craps practices what they now preach.

Looking through the 2002 election cycle records at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, I seem to see donations totaling $190,000 from a “political/ideological” entity called the “Lawton Committee”. I can’t seem to find any information on this committee with either a Yahoo or Google search, but I do know that Barbara Lawton was his lieutenant governor running mate and in fact is the serving lt. gov. My best guess is that the “Lawton Committee” listed in the WDC report is the campaign committee of Barbara Lawton, and I don’t think the $43,128 limit just popped into state law in the last 4 years.

Golly; once again, it looks like Team Craps has stepped in it. Of course, they’re on friendly turf in Dane County, and they do have a Craps-stacked State Supreme Court (one that was left unchallenged by the “R”PW earlier this year).

Remember, I predicted the full monty grand theft back on September 6…

Here’s a bold prediction; whether the Craps strategy of trying to smear Green while starving his campaign of some funds works or not in the public arena, Craps will try to get his Doylie Elections Board to declare the other $800,000 Green transfered from his federal campaign "illegal" by early October, using the "justification" that federal law prohibits the transfer of state campaign funds.

I was slightly wrong on the timing (it’s only mid-September), the forum and the “justification”, but you have to give me credit for nailing the theft. As for the “remaining” $43,128, the Doylies will push to have that disappear in the form of “fines”.

Make this pic (borrowed from Patrick) happen; vote Mark Green Nov. 7