From Wisconsin Dept. of Administration (tip to Wheeler Report): Thursday, March 10, 2011 Capitol opening delayed Thursday Capitol opening delayed Thursday The Wisconsin State Capitol did not open at 8 a.m. Thursday morning due to events the previous night when thousands of people entered the building after the Capitol was to have been closed for […]
Author Archive | Jim Lindgren
Wis. Senate Clerk: Only Notice Required for Committee Meeting Was Posting on Bulletin Board
Questions have been raised whether the 2-hour notice given of the Wisconsin Senate committee meeting was adequate. Rob Marchant, the Clerk of the Senate issued this statement (tip to Wheeler Report): There was some discussion today about the notice provided for the legislature’s conference committee. In special session, under Senate Rule 93, no advance notice […]
Wisconsin Substitute Bill is Only 6 Pages Shorter
The 138-page substitute for Wisconsin Senate Bill 11 is only 6 pages shorter than the 144-page original Bill 11. The senators seem to have left in everything that was not clearly fiscal. They even left in several sections near the end that (unwisely, IMO) still have “Fiscal” headings, though they contain no taxes or increases […]
Wisconsin Senate Splits and Passes Most of the Budget Bill
The Wisconsin Senate has passed a budget bill with the “non-fiscal” provisions stripped out, just as I proposed last week in a manuscript on SSRN, a post at Volokh (“Wisconsin Senate Does Not Need a 3/5ths Quorum to Pass Much of the Budget Bill”), and an op-ed at National Review Online. Those curious about the […]
Michael Stern: “No Warrant” for Interpreting the Wis. Constitution as Barring Seizure by the Senate Itself
Michael Stern has a thoughtful post at PointofOrder.com on the arrest clause of the Wisconsin and US constitutions. He argues (in part): As Akil Amar and Neal Katyal note in a 1995 law review article, modern cases have given the arrest clause such a narrow construction as to make it a “virtual nullity.” They suggest, […]
The Arrest Clause of the Wisconsin Constitution Applies Only to Court “Cases,” not to Compulsory Attendance
Does the Wisconsin Senate have the power to compel absent Democratic senators to return to the senate floor if they re-enter the state of Wisconsin? Yes. But the Senate Resolution, by focusing on contempt and disorderly conduct, weakens the basis for this action. I think this question must be analyzed at four levels: 1. Constitutional […]
NRO Editorial-“A New Wisconsin Strategy: Split Out the Union Provisions and Pass Them by a Simple Majority”
I have an editorial up on National Review Online on the history of the super-majority quorum requirement and my proposal to split out the collective bargaining provisions and pass them first: The Republicans could split the bill into three bills. The first bill should be as short as possible, containing only the most central collective-bargaining […]
Wisconsin Contempt Orders Hark Back to Byrd’s “Arrest” of Packwood
The Wisconsin Senate today passed a resolution holding the absent Democratic senators in contempt if they did not return by 4pm today. After the obligatory string of whereas clauses, the Senate made these resolutions: Resolved, That Senators Carpenter, S. Coggs, T. Cullen, Erpenbach, Hansen, Holperin, Jauch, C. Larson, Lassa, Miller, Risser, Taylor, Vinehout, and Wirch […]
Wisconsin Senate Does Not Need a 3/5ths Quorum to Pass Much of the Budget Bill
I have a new paper up on SSRN–Super Quorums Under the Wisconsin Constitution–that examines the constitutional three-fifths quorum requirement in Wisconsin. It applies only to particular kinds of fiscal bills, not to all bills that merely have a fiscal impact. Further, it has been interpreted extremely narrowly in the past. Indeed, there is a 1971 […]
The Political Weakness of the 2012 Republican Field
Nate Silver has a wonderful post comparing the 2012 Republican field to Republican and Democratic fields since 1999. The bad news for Republicans is that this year there are no candidates who enjoy double-digit net positive opinions among the electorate. Huckabee leads the field with 40% positive and 32% negative (a net positive of 8%). […]
When Loughner wrote of the “second United States constitution,” he very probably meant the second US constitution, the one following the Articles of Confederation
One issue that has arisen about Jared Loughner’s politics is his reference to the “second United States constitution.” In his YouTube video, “Introduction: Jared Loughner,” he wrote: The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America’s Constitution. You don’t have to accept the federalist laws. Nonetheless, […]
Jared Loughner’s Anti-War Views
Now that Caitie Parker has been confirmed as a friend of Jared Lee Loughner’s, it seems relevant to ask whether Loughner was still a left wing radical, as he was when Caitie last saw him over two years ago. Among the clues are his apparent postings under the name Erad3 at Above Top Secret (ATS). […]
What were Jared Loughner’s Politics?
When a very probably mentally ill person kills a judge and a young child, that person’s politics are not terribly relevant. The cause is usually mental illness, not political ideology. But even if you don’t agree with me on that point, the current attacks on conservatives over this shooting are at least premature, since we […]
Is Jared Loughner the Shooter?
The shooter in the Arizona tragedy has been identified (whether accurately or not) as Jared Laughner. I think that the spelling of his name might instead be Jared Lee Loughner, who appears to have posted this Youtube video on December 15, 2010. As I post this, Loughner’s video has only 315 [310] hits. The video […]
Trickle Up Economics, An Xtranormal Cartoon
Here is an Xtranormal cartoon about trickle-up and trickle-down economics. Glenn Reynolds is mentioned about a half minute into it. “Trickle Up Economics” UPDATE: Here is the San Francisco Fed’s study, suggesting about a 0.4% increase in the unemployment rate because of extending benefits for up to a total of 99 weeks. It also documents […]