Uppity Wisconsin

Amy Smith, the last-minute finalist for Dane County Judge rejected by a selection committee and then added by Gov. Jim Doyle is the focus of a piece today by John Nichols in the Cap Times.

Truly, the nicest thing I have heard from practicing members of the Wisconsin Bar is that prosecutor Amy Smith is lying and overzealous.

Writes Nichols:

Members of the selection committee ... would neither confirm nor deny that Smith's name was left off the list because she had on two separate occasions been rebuke by appellate court judges for dishonesty, including one instance where an entire three-judge panel on a drug case chastised the prosecutor for lying about a potential trial witness.

Smith refused repeated requests for her side of the story, even as her name was associated with the most controversial judicial appointment the county has seen in some years.

 Nichols see Smith as an example of what is wrong with the proposed so-called merit selection process that would replace the the election of judges, in favor of other judicial election reform.

As the world health authorities contend with halting the Swine Flu, John Nichols points to the almost pathological disdain that Republicans have for the government's promoting public health, and specifically stopping pandemics in his GOP Know-Nothings Fought Pandemic Preparedness (The Nation).

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

With a major political party actually hostile to the idea of public health, not a good idea to be reading Daniel Kalla bio-terror novels like Pandemic, in case anyone brought some of this genre of books for their girlfriend last Valentines Day.