Regarding mornings, put me in Sheriff Hopper’s camp. He’s the Stranger Things character, repeatedly informing folks: “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”
Speaking of stranger things, who expects an early morning SWAT-like police raid on their home?
Three years ago, yesterday, that happened to Cindy Archer, and other conservatives in Wisconsin. Near dawn, a dozen police officers in flak jackets pounded on her door, carrying a battering ram just in case. Her dogs were freaking out and she feared they’d be shot. The police ransacked her home, confiscating her computer and smart phone.
This was a secretive John Doe investigation, so Ms. Archer was informed she could discuss the raid with nobody but her lawyer. The raid was public, the media tipped off, but Archer was prevented from defending herself publicly. Or even privately, among friends and relatives.
Her suspected crime?
Like her fellow targets, she had supported Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to reform the law regarding public employee unions. And for fundraising “coordination” in pursuit thereof.
The gag order slapped on conservatives in 29 groups might have prevented us from knowing the partisan political assault taking place, but Eric O’Keefe, the head of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, courageously spoke out.
“Had I honored their secrecy order, I couldn’t have organized our defense,” Eric O’Keefe told Blaze TV. “I decided quickly — look, this is supposed to be a free country, I’m going to operate as though it is, even if it isn’t today.”
First, John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson ordered the probe to close. Prosecutors appealed.
O’Keefe went to federal court and soon Judge Rudolph Randa agreed that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the Government Accountability Board were violating their rights. Randa warned: “[A]ttempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.”
Randa’s ruling was stayed pending the appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. “It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing,” read the that court’s majority opinion.
Still, the persecutors persisted, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Yesterday morning, the High Court denied Milwaukee County’s appeal.
Calling the three-year dystopian odyssey “a disgraceful episode in Wisconsin history,” this morning Mr. O’Keefe is pushing the state legislature to have some coffee and contemplate (and then legislate) ensuring this never happens again.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
1 reply on “It’s Morning in Wisconsin”
A fitting end, the USSC stating there was no question worthy of its review as the state was rebuffed from expanding its power and therefore repression.
And God bless Eric O’Keefe, truely brace is believing the government would be controlled by the judiciary which are a part of it.