Waukesha, Chutzpah Country

You have to hand it to Waukesha: It spent years fighting federal clean drinking water standards and dunned its water utility ratepayers big-dollar legal fees as inflation and the passage of time kept the meter running and added to the cost of the inevitable, eventual and predictable order-to-fix.

And new consultant and legal fees have been spent to create the inevitable and eventual and fix - - a controversial application to divert Lake Michigan water into Waukesha - -  and even though Waukesha is in the heart of one of the reddest, anti-big-government counties and area codes in America, it wants $75 million in federal grant subsidy to help defray some of its inevitable, eventual costs - - and its rabidly anti-spending, anti-earmark Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner is already working on it.