It Took Two Weeks, But JS Publishes Strong Doe Editorial

[Updated in italics] Nicely-done, and I nagged the paper to get on with it, and it's too bad this long editorial is not running more prominently on a week day - - though without a Saturday editorial page, I am assuming this will run in the Sunday paper, which would be appropriate.

Remember, as they say in the courthouse, judges read the papers, too:

John Doe investigation of Gov. Scott Walker's campaign must continue

The smarmy politics glimpsed in a recent batch of documents released by a federal appeals court is discouraging for democracy.

Consider just these two nuggets:

■The governor's campaign urged deep-pocketed donors to give to the Wisconsin Club for Growth because it "can accept Corporate and Personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure." This is the same governor, by the way, who has trumpeted transparency as the antidote to big money in politics.

■The company that wants to open a massive open-pit iron mine in northern Wisconsin donated $700,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, and then Walker and Republicans in the Legislature raced to pass a bill that makes the mine more likely to happen.

In his defense, Walker says he played no role in soliciting the donation from Gogebic Taconite LLC — and he is quick to note that he had long been a mining supporter. The governor also points out that prosecutors have said he is not a target of their investigation and that two judges — one federal and one state — have raised questions about the investigation...

The public has a right to know who is influencing its government — it is essential in the aftermath of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that allow massive quantities of cash to flow into campaigns. The Supreme Court blessed such transparency in the Citizens United case but fainthearted lawmakers in Madison and Washington, D.C., haven't seen fit to allow it.

Transparency should be the price of admission to politics: Give what you like but disclose what you give — and who you are.

That is not the case now, a fact Walker's campaign and others have used to their advantage. Did Walker's operatives break state law? We won't hazard a guess. But what they did, even if legal, ensured that the corrosive influence of money continues to taint Wisconsin politics.

Final observation. I'll bet Mike Ellis agrees, too.