Constitutional Scholar Stanley Kutler Illuminates Mitt Romney

Constitutional expert Stanley Kutler gives us on the Fighting Bob blog the background to understand where Mitt Romney was trying to take us with his much-publicized speech on religion and politics.

And it isn't to John F. Kennedy's high ground on the separation of church and state.

Kutler's essay is even more timely now that Mike Huckabee wants to turn that 1st amendment wall separating church and state into something with the strength of a bead curtain.

Murphy Oil, With Probable Wetlands Filling Looming, Helps Preserve Recreational Area

Murphy Oil is expected to formally approach the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in the coming weeks with a plan to fill between 300-500 wetland acres to accommodate a six-fold capacity increase in its Superior, WI refinery.

In what is both a boon for Northern Wisconsin, and a smart public relations move, too, Murphy announced a $40,000 grant that completes a deal to expand an important regional recreational area.

Probably not a coincidence.

Texas Pollutes More Than Most Countries

Like everything else in Texas, pollution is big there, too.

Citizens Allied for Sane Highways (CASH) Now Has Its Own Blog

Transportation expert Gretchen Schuldt, co-founder of Citizens Allied for Sane Highways (CASH) now has its own blog.

You want to know how the state transportation department is spending you money (and your children's, and grandchildren's), then you gotta check this new, newsy site at least daily.

Another Mass Shooting, And The Country Will Shrug It Off

This time in a religious training center.

But the country is so in the grip of the gun lobby that nothing remedial will come if it, just as other mass shootings - - in a mall, in an Amish school, on a playground, on a University campus, in a McDonalds...the list is endless and bloody- - roll right off our collective back.

Madness.

And updating - - a second fatal shooting at a church, 60 miles from the site of the first.

No doubt the gun movement will say this is an argument for concealed carry in the pews.

Madness II.

Riverwest Neighborhoods Network Delves Into A City-Supported Military Contract For Known Polluter

It's rare that someone delves so deeply into a single item and unearths so many interesting angles - - and can communicate them - - but Dan Knauss at Riverwest Neighborhoods Network has done just that with his investigation into a city plan to subsidize a battery-maker with a bad environmental record.

Coming Monday...Stay Tuned

I'm going to to put up a post Monday, based in large part on the results of several open records requests, to address, in some detail, this question:

"What is the public to do if a major state regulatory agency arrogates power, and the media do not address the situation?"

Wisconsin Could Lead The Economy Away From Expensive Corn Ethanol

Interesting story in the Sunday Journal Sentinel about Wisconsin's possible role in advancing the use of so-called cellulosic ethanol - - derived from wood chips or grasses instead of corn.

Ethanol produced from corn requires too much water, petroleum and energy to generate much real savings.

This blog has posted a number of commentaries on this issue, going back to March.

And Denny Caneff, executive director of the River Alliance of Wisconsin, has been hammering home this point since January.

UN Predicts Major Job Growth In "Green" Industries

Technological changes to combat or react to climate change will produce millions of new jobs worldwide, according to a new United Nations report.

Put that up against this report about the environmental damage looming in Alberta, Canada, as oil companies tear apart the landscape to extract thick crude oil from tar sand.

That's the very oil to be piped to the expanding refineries on the Great Lakes - - to the British Petroleum facility on Lake Michigan at Whiting, Indiana, and the Murphy Oil Co. refinery at Superior, Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources expects to receive preliminary permitting applications from Murphy by the end of December, including a plan to fill between 300-500 acres of wetlands for the expanded plant.

That would constitute the largest wetlands filling in Wisconsin since the adoption of the US Clean Water Act in 1972.

Conservationists Want a More Activist DNR Board

Ballast water routinely used by cargo ships is a known source of invasive species that is harming the Great Lakes, and with Congress unable to put ballast water controls on the books, conservationists in Wisconsin want the Natural Resources Board to act on its own.

The Department of Natural Resources, governed to some degree by the Board, fears that a state-only initiative might put Wisconsin shippers at a competitive disadvantage: the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation is leading a coalition that is applying the pressure.

More and more, the DNR behaves like an arm of the Wisconsin Department of Commerce: the wildlife federation is reminding the Board and the DNR that its first job is environment and resources protection, and the Great Lakes are certainly at the heart of that mission.

The Federation is also at the forefront of an effort to return the appointment of the DNR Secretary to the Board.

Under former Gov. Tommy Thompson, the secretarial appointment authority was removed from the Board to the Governor.

A Few Words About Romney And His Religion

I'm increasingly concerned about the attention being paid to GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

I figure it's his business alone.

Same for the other candidates' faiths, or if one or more of them said they had none, or wanted to keep it all private.

We're electing a President, not anointing a national High Priest.

We're choosing someone to govern, not to pastor us, or prophesize for us.
The winner will swear to uphold The Constitution, and that's good enough for me.

I'd be more comfortable if candidates could keep their relationships with their Higher Power and/or deity as they define them/it to themselves.

I go back to the uproar over the Coexist bumper sticker.

Stop taking potshots at, or obsessing about, other people's faiths. Behave tolerantly. We're a pluralistic society, so let's try and behave that way.

December Anniversaries Underscore Failure To Protect Great Lakes

T.S. Eliot told us that April is the cruelest month, but for people hoping to protect the Great Lakes, December contains some pretty harsh markers, too.

I sum it up in a column in today's Madison Capital Times.

Power Company, Stray Voltage, Liable For Dairy Cows' Death - - Annette Zeilger Blames The Farmers

Wisconsin is the dairy state, so when the local power company's transmission wires help kill or injure your herd, the State Supreme Court will rule in your favor.

That's the good news.

The troubling, but not-so-surprising sidebar, is that newly-minted Justice Annette Ziegler wrote a dissent that suggested the dairy farmers working the family homestead were also somehow at fault.

Nice try, though at 4-3 in favor of the farmers, it was close.

I guess big business can't win everything that comes before the Supreme Court - - yet - - but Ziegler is doing her bit, and that's exactly why the WMC wanted her there.

If the WMC can get a Ziegler clone on the Court next year, the next such case might go 4-3 the other way.

Look for that majority to say that cows who live near powerlines have to take personal responsibility, walk off to another farm if they feel threatened, and basically should stop mooing about it and pull themselves up by their hoofs.

Lake Michigan Water Levels Hitting Historic Lows - - Diversion Discussions Hitting Historic Highs

Lake Michigan continues to fall.

That's not stopping City of Waukesha officials from continuing their discussions with a compliant Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to sketch out potential ways to divert Lake Michigan water - - probably with less than a guaranteed-100% return flow 12 months a year, sources say.

The DNR is also encouraging New Berlin to discuss a diversion deal with the City of Milwaukee, even though Milwaukee's position is that there should be no deals until the state legislature approves the pending Great Lakes Compact, with its first-ever standardized diversion rules and water conservation standards.

Not to mention that the Wisconsin Attorney General has said, in writing, that under federal law, Wisconsin cannot unilaterally approve any diversions without the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors - - an opinion that the DNR and major Wisconsin media are pretending wasn't written.

I've written about and cited that opinion six times since May:

It's a sad state of affairs that some of our more powerful media and governmental officials are in a mutually denial pact over the opinion, and are overlooking its conclusion, that:

A 21-year-old federal statute forbids New Berlin, Waukesha or any other Wisconsin community receiving a Great Lakes diversion without all eight Great Lakes governors giving their OK.

No unilateral action by Wisconsin, according to the opinion.

And the regional planning commission, (SEWEPC), continues to discuss possible future regional water supply plans that could include diversions of Lake Michigan water to communities like Waukesha that are beyond the boundaries of the Great Lakes basin.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in August of this year noted the expanding list of communities in several counties that SEWRPC was adding to its list of potential Lake Michigan diversion recipients - - for discussion purposes.

Yes, you read that right: expanding list.

I've been predicting that SEWRPC will probably endorse this kind of approach through a regional water authority - - in part because it is recommending sprawl-inducing highway expansion beyond the Great Lakes basin, and because it hired a leading Wisconsin legal expert on regional water matters to assist the commission's ongoing water supply study.

Anyone see a contradiction to this media disinterest and parallel government planning and momentum taking place while levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior continue to fall so dramatically?

MMSD Continues Its Environmental Initiatives

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District will always have its PR problems because of occasional overflows - - and it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to continue to minimize them - - but there is less notice for its forward-looking stormwater mitigation and environmental initiatives that help the region's ecosystem

This small item from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel deserves wider distribution:

"MMSD donates land to DNR for wildlife area

"The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has donated 63.7 acres of wetland, grassland and woods along Ryan Creek in Franklin to the state Department of Natural Resources.

"The property, which extends from S. 116th St. west to the north shore of a 30-acre body of water known locally as Dumke's Pond, will become part of the DNR's Big Muskego Lake Wildlife Area in Waukesha and Milwaukee counties.

"MMSD acquired the parcel this year at a cost of $434,273 for its Greenseams flood control program.

"The district will retain a conservation easement on the property to ensure future state land management activities are compatible with regional flood management goals.

"The DNR had awarded MMSD a $197,500 grant from the state stewardship fund in July to help pay the purchase price."

Midwest Cities Banding Together - - Will Milwaukee Be Invited?

Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Toledo, OH are working with the Brookings Institution to organize a regional partnership of chambers of commerce.

The goal is to exploit the region's economic advantages, among them being proximity to Great Lakes water.

It's by invitation only: I wonder if the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce will get the call?

Those folks running the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce can pretty much figure on reading about it in the newspapers, as they oppose adopting the Great Lakes Compact, a water conservation partnership, because it is too much of a cooperative, regional agreement.

Righty Talkers Miss The Point When Sniping at Huckabee

Some of our local talkers are lining up against former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the blended pro-life, sorta populist Republican who has sinned against GOP doctrine by raising some taxes.

The talkers are slamming Huckabee's rise in some Iowa polls, and believe that when real Republicans find out Huckabee isn't a real Republican, they'll turn to a real Republican - - Romney, perhaps, or Guiliani, neither of whom, to the talkers secret dismay, are really real Republicans.

Like George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan.

Here's what our talkers don't understand, because they spend too much time in locked studios, away from real people.

Huckabee strikes people as authentic. He's not a stiff. He doesn't appear scripted. He seems likable.

He's being read as genuine, relative to other candidates, so his numbers are up.

It's similar to Barack Obama's popularity. Even Ron Paul's.

People like fresh faces. It's more than being, as one of the talkers said, "the flavor of the week."

Not every voter is obsessed as are some of the talkers with the microscopic details of tax policy, or their version of Conservative Truth, or the other deadly vagaries of Republican doctrine.

Thank goodness.

Mayhem In Omaha: No Doubt It's The Shooter, Not The Gun, To Blame

Or something like that, which inevitably will be the right-wing gun fanatics' copping-out denial in the wake of the Omaha massacre.

We in the US of A have these nuts going ballistic, literally, a heckuva lot more frequently than anywhere else on earth, because in America, you can get your hands on heavy-duty firepower quicker and cheaper than anywhere else on the planet.

So when a deranged person goes off the medication, or otherwise breaks completely, the means of mass murder is much more available.

Don't talk to me about baseball bats, or steak knives. That's not what happens.

The killer does his (yes, pretty much always "his") greater damage - - whether in the high school hallway, on playgrounds, in restaurants, on the highway, or on a college classroom - - because the gun is available.

Those poor people in Nebraska. Out Christmas shopping, and gunned down.

Just ridiculous.

I note in updates from the Omaha World Herald that the killer used an SKS rifle.

The SKS is a military weapon that is often called an assault rifle, though because it's not manufactured to fire selectively in single or automatic bursts, it's just a plain old vicious, terribly deadly, non-assault rifle.

A carbine. To the general public, it's an assault rifle because it's military and devastating, and to the dead Nebraskans, it's of no consequence.

Anyway...

There are many SKS variants, having metastasized from the Soviet Union to China and throughout other former Eastern bloc countries, as a cheap, durable deadly, mass-produced and exportable military weapon - - a staple of the world arms trade.

Not with the ugly cachet of the true assault rifle, like an AK-47, but available from Africa to Asia...to southeastern Wisconsin, aina!

When I was a reporter for the old Milwaukee Journal, I remember covering a gun show in Elkhorn, where a dealer had three tables filled with new Chinese SKS rifles, with polished blond-wood stocks, fresh from wooden shipping containers.

$200 a pop.

Some people swear by them as hunting rifles.

Chai Vang, the Hmong hunter from Minnesota who killed six hunters in northern Wisconsin, used an SKS.

In the hands of a deranged citizen, whether during the deer hunting or Christmas shopping season, an SKS becomes the killing machine that it was intended to be.

We make it far too easy for people to own something on the order of an SKS. Is that what the 2nd amendment was really designed to guarantee:

That a 19-year-old kid could take one over to the mall and hunt people to go out in his blaze of glory.

As Murphy Oil Expands at Superior...Suppose it Becomes ExxonMobil, or Foreign-Owned?

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is awaiting Murphy Oil's first expansion permitting paperwork before the end of the year, leading to what could become the biggest wetlands filling and construction project in Wisconsin history.

So along with all the environmental and commercial questions that this project will raise for northern Wisconsin, and for Lake Superior - - here's another:

What if Murphy is bought out by a foreign, state-run company, or a larger conglomerate? Do we care? Is anybody tracking the ramifications?

One expert says Murphy is a takeover target.

Will the state ask the company about its financial plans, as it assesses its capability to pull off a $6 billion expansion safely and sanely?

Waukesha Blogger Asks The Right Questions About the Pabst Farm Mall

James Widgerson, a generally-conservative blogger from Waukesha County, asks the right questions about a new developer's proposal to build some sort of shopping mall at Pabst Farm.

The earlier proposal for a high-end mall was withdrawn by a previous developer - - the same one that is responsible for the Mayfair Mall - - suggesting that the retail market is not there in Western Waukesha County for a regional shopping center.

And despite previous TIF subsidies from the City of Oconomowoc, and another $25 million gob of money aimed the mall's way for a brand new interstate interchange.

So Widgerson asks: is this the best use of 184 acres of land?

In a County where many of the big questions are not been raised until after the land has been subdivided or paved, (Pabst Farms' acreage was rated prime ag land and recommended to remain as such by the Southeastern Regional Planning Commission, SEWRPC), Widgerson's posting is a breath of fresh air.

So much so that I am publicly forgiving him for his support of the Dallas Cowboys.