Where’s the outcry among campaign finance “reformers”?
Silence.
In Wisconsin, laws regulating political speech, along with the clamor for stepped-up “enforcement,” have facilitated an awesomely powerful prosecutor to launch dawn SWAT raids, dragging men, women and children out of their beds, stealing their computers and cell phones and ransacking their homes.
For what crime?
Supporting an act passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor.
And for having the bravery, or naïveté, to think we live in a free republic where organizing with others to promote ideas about public policy is a noble pursuit.
Not a one-way ticket to Room 101.
Here at Common Sense we’ve been following these dystopian John Doe raids since 2013, when my friend and hero, Eric O’Keefe, refused to be bullied into silence: he violated a gag order to tell the Wall Street Journal and other media about secret investigations tying up 29 conservative groups.
O’Keefe’s courage inspired several suffering the dawn raids to finally speak out. An article by David French in the May issue of National Review tells their stories, which sparked attention last week from Rush Limbaugh and on Fox News’s The Kelly File.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm “correctly identified some of the most important communicators of political messages in Wisconsin,” O’Keefe told Meghan Kelly, “and they raided their family homes, with kids at home .… They came in the dark.”
“Put aside whether people should have filed different campaign finance reports, is this an appropriate tactic for any kind of campaign finance question?” he asked.
O’Keefe has fought back, suing Chisholm in federal court. Today, we may discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in his case and determine whether a federal district court judge’s injunction against Chisholm’s witch-hunt will stand.
We all know what this is really about. Chisholm was retaliating against individuals and groups that supported Governor Scott Walker’s ultimately successful moves to curb Wisconsin’s public employee unions. It’s a grand example of our age’s real class warfare: between insiders with power and outsiders trying to curb that power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Wisconsin Raids Speak Volumes”
Go Eric. Spending time with Ms. Jelly might compensate a bit for the aggravation and risk.
As for the USSC appeal, Mr. Chisholm should quit while he is ahead, merely losing at the U.S. Court of Appeals.
That is Ms. Kelly. Damn these smart devices!
This is worse than the tales of the evil Soviet Union from my youth. They need to slam these guys hard.
Outrageous. They’ll be coming for all of us if we don’t hang together.
They have already come. Our problem was in looking for gendarmes. The more subtle way that they have applied is the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, aka the “nudge” unit. Since we are beset by the “confusion of the multitudes” that Madison warned of, and have essentially no voice in the day to day affairs of the federal empire, we are no military threat and are better managed through manipulation. Their psychobabble uses the term “sustainable development”, a euphemism for central control and regulation of virtually every aspect of economic activity that goes on in the country. It is the antithesis of economic freedom on which America was founded and an excuse for collection of power and money to whomever manages to scramble to federal positions.
.…this is a prime reason why both “qualified” and “absolute” immunity must be abolished –no public official should b able to “hide” behind official immunity. Abolition of immunity should be applicable to ALL public employees. If they could be personally sued, and lose everything they ow, they might be more inclined to behave themselves. Any payouts to aggrieved citizens should come out of their pension funds…
The Supremacy clause always applies as long as the federal government is acting constitutionally. Which means that suppression of free speech by the state is always unconstitutional. People get the government that they deserve, and are willing to settle for. Why has Wisconsin settled for this D.A.?