FREE WHITEWATER

Schimel

Daily Bread for 3.28.25: Look Who’s Coming to Review His Investment

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset is 7:16, for 12 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory.


It’s a frenetic ending to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Elon Musk is coming to Wisconsin:

In a post on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk wrote late Thursday that he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” on Sunday night. He did not say where.

“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote, though he did not specify how that would be verified.

Musk also wrote that he would present two $1 million checks “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

….

In a statement, the spokesman for Schimel’s opponent, liberal Susan Crawford, said Musk was trying to buy off Schimel and labeled his visit a “last-minute desperate distraction.”

“Wisconsinites don’t want a billionaire like Musk telling them who to vote for, and on Tuesday, voters should reject Musk’s lackey Brad Schimel,” spokesman Derrick Honeyman said.

See Alison Dirr, Daniel Bice, and Molly Beck, Elon Musk will be in Wisconsin Sunday, hand out $2M ahead of Tuesday state Supreme Court election, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 28, 2025.

Trump joins a teleconference for Schimel:

Trump framed the race that will decide the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court in national terms, saying it would have an “outsized impact on the future of the country.”

“I know you feel it’s local, but it’s not. It’s really much more than local,” Trump said in the 10-minute call. “The whole country’s watching.”

See Alison Dirr, President Trump in public call urges Wisconsinites to support Brad Schimel in Supreme Court race, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 27, 2025.

We’ll know soon enough.


This time, a Guinness World Record for an Ashland motorcyclist’s global journey:

After 14 months and 50,000 miles, Bridget McCutchen from Ashland earned the Guinness World Record as the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe by motorcycle. The northern Wisconsin native traversed 45 countries, developing newfound confidence — and inspiring more women to ride — along the way.

Daily Bread for 3.25.25: Ron Johnson’s Right (Truly) About Musk & Schimel

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 6:48 and sunset is 7:13, for 12 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 19.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1655, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.


It’s a week from Election Day, and Ron Johnson’s correct in his recent observation on Brad Schimel’s campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

His comments came as he and Schimel joined Musk in a live, half-hour discussion on the social media platform X, which the tech billionaire owns. The conversation took place less than 24 hours after Trump waded into the race with a long-sought endorsement of Schimel.More: All our reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford, Brad Schimel

“This is entirely winnable, and you know, if we do win it, again, we have to thank Elon for all the support he’s given this race, and I was really glad to see President Trump throw in his endorsement as well,” Johnson told the 10,000 people on the livestream…..

….

A statement from Crawford’s campaign described the X event as “Elon Musk’s check-in with his $12 million investment.”

“Musk wants a lackey on the Supreme Court who will rule in his company’s favor on their lawsuit against the State of Wisconsin,” said Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman. “Wisconsinites don’t want this slimy and corrupt billionaire running our Supreme Court.”

See Alison Dirr, Elon Musk will be to thank if Brad Schimel wins Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Ron Johnson says, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 22, 2025.


Crews in the Carolinas fight multiple wildfires:

Daily Bread for 3.20.25: Schimel Remixes Yesteryear’s WISGOP Conspiracy Theories

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 7:07, for 12 hours, 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 68 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1815,  after escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.


Look who’s pushing with yesteryear’s bogus claims:

The Republican-backed candidate in Wisconsin’s closely watched state Supreme Court race has resurfaced long debunked concerns about voting fraud because of the late reporting of ballots in Milwaukee just two weeks before the April 1 election.

Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general, spoke of the possibility of “bags of ballots” and fraud in Milwaukee during an interview Tuesday on conservative talk radio. Schimel faces Democratic-backed Susan Crawford in the April 1 election with majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court at stake.

Schimel, in an interview on WISN-AM, said his supporters need to “get our votes banked, make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”

Schimel said that happened in 2018 and in November “when (U.S. Senate candidate) Eric Hovde was ahead all night, and then all of a sudden, Milwaukee County changed that.”

What’s the plain truth about how ballots are processed? It’s this:

Milwaukee’s absentee ballots are counted at a central location and reported all at once, often well after midnight on election day. Elections officials for years have made clear that those ballots are reported later than usual due to the sheer number that have to be counted and because state law does not allow them to be processed until polls open.

See Scott Bauer, Republican-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate resurfaces unproven fraud concerns, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 19, 2025.

When the WISGOP loses, it screams against voting counting; when the WISGOP wins, it holds its tongue.

These ‘unproven fraud concerns’ are the work of excuse-makers.


A Baraboo Circus Artist:

Artist Joan Stevens helps preserve Circus World Museum’s historic wagon collection.

Daily Bread for 3.16.25: Brad Schimel’s Halloween Costume

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see light snow, mostly cloudy conditions, and a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 7:02, for 11 hours, 58 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1935, Hitler orders Germany to rearm itself in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.


Schimel’s supportive costume1:

And for years, Judge Schimel has repeated some of Mr. Trump’s talking points about Wisconsin elections.

During an April 2018 interview with one of the state’s leading conservative talk-radio hosts, Judge Schimel said it was not clear that Mr. Trump, who carried the state in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes, or Senator Johnson, who won by about 99,000 votes that year, would have prevailed had the state’s voter identification law not been in place.

In January, he said he did not object to Mr. Trump’s pardons of supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Then there was the Halloween party last year.

In the final week before the election, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage.” Mr. Trump responded by dressing up in a sanitation worker’s reflective vest and driving a garbage truck.

Two days later, when Judge Schimel’s cover band, 4 on The Floor, played a Halloween gig at Michael’s Funky Monkey bar in Waukesha, he wore a reflective vest just like Mr. Trump’s and rocked out while playing the Rolling Stones classic “Sympathy for the Devil.”

See Reid J. Epstein and Steve Eder, The Trump Loyalist Aiming to Swing Wisconsin Back to the Right (‘Brad Schimel, a judge who is so supportive of the president that he dressed up as him for Halloween, is hoping to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court for conservatives’), New York Times, March 13, 2025.

There are many ways to describe Schimel’s costume choice, some supportive (identifying with his political hero and that hero’s supporters who believe they’ve been insulted), some not (a weak man’s choice, identifying with an autocrat who stokes the narcissistic insult that a populist horde too quickly feels).

Both can be true, but the latter tolls more strongly.

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  1. The link to the New York Times story is open, and one can play the clip of Schimel with maracas standing around awkwardly groovin’ to the vibe. ↩︎

Cougar cubs:

Daily Bread for 3.13.25: The Crawford-Schimel Debate

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 6:59, for 11 hours, 50 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, an Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.


Last night, Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel met in the only debate of their campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

Several times, Crawford accused Schimel of saying different things to broader audiences than to audiences made up of his political allies. She called attention to reporting by the Washington Post that Schimel said Trump was “screwed over” by the Supreme Court in its decisions regarding the 2020 election, and reporting by the Wisconsin Examiner that he had told a group of canvassers he’d be a “support network” for Trump. 

“He is not impartial, and he says different things in front of a broad audience like this, where he knows it’s going to be televised, than he’ll say when he’s talking to his political allies,” she said. “He is not trustworthy.” 

On the campaign trail, access to abortion has been one of the most prominent issues. The Court is currently considering a lawsuit that would have the state’s 1849 law declared invalid, while another lawsuit is pending in the lower courts asking if the state’s Constitution grants a right to abortion access. 

Schimel has said he personally opposes abortion, that both of his daughters are adopted and he believes the 1849 statute is a “valid law.” In the debate he repeated what he’s said during the campaign on the issue — that it should be up to the state’s voters. Wisconsin doesn’t allow voters to influence state law through a referendum process. 

See Henry Redman, Supreme Court candidates continue accusations of partisanship in sole debate, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 13, 2025.

Schimel likely knows, if he’s worked up the energy to read the law after his habitually light work schedule, that a voters’ referendum would be advisory,1 and to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 statutory abortion ban would require a proposed state constitutional amendment2 that the WISGOP legislature would never put before voters.

Schimel being untrustworthy is an axiom. See FREE WHITEWATER, We Now Know that Schimel Has Lied at Least Once (Could Be More!), March 28, 2025.

Shrewd moment of the night came from Crawford:

At one point, in a remark that Crawford said was a “slip of the tongue,” she referred to Musk as “Elon Schimel.”

Worth running an add with that moniker for Schimel…

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  1. As with a proposed advisory referendum in 2024 that, in fact, never made it out of the Wisconsin Legislature. ↩︎
  2. Gov. Evers has proposed the ability of voters to adopt or repeal state laws without the Legislature, but the WISGOP won’t approve that, either. ↩︎

How to see Thursday’s night, Friday morning’s lunar eclipse:

Look to the sky late Thursday evening to spot a rare blood moon lunar eclipse. The total lunar eclipse will be visible in North America, South America, western parts of Europe and Africa from Thursday, March 13 to Friday, March 14. As the moon passes through the Earth’s innermost shadow, light from the sun passing through the Earth’s atmosphere will be filtered in just the right way to bathe the moon in a reddish, orange hue. Totality – when the moon is completely within the Earth’s inner shadow and turns reddish – will start at 12:26 a.m. EDT and 11:26 p.m. PDT and last about 65 minutes. The phenomenon is visible by the naked eye, but for the best viewing experience, find a dark environment and grab a pair of binoculars or a telescope. According to NASA, another total lunar eclipse won’t be visible in the U.S. until March 2026.

Daily Bread for 3.12.25: Trump Runs for Wisconsin Supreme Court

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset is 6:58, for 11 hours, 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1989,  Sir Tim Berners-Lee submits his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web.


Musk pays for ads that boost Schimel for Tump:

“Conservative Brad Schimel will support President Trump’s agenda!” says the new flyer. “Together, we won the White House. Now it’s time to win the courthouse!”

A mailer supporting conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel is paid for the America PAC, a super PAC started by billionaire Elon Musk to support Donald Trump during his campaign for the presidency..

The campaign literature features a picture of Trump being sworn in as president with his hand upheld and a second photo of Schimel with the Wisconsin Capitol in the background. It then urges voters to elect Schimel to the Supreme Court next month.

America PAC, the Musk super PAC, and a second Musk group, the nonprofit Building America’s Future, have reported spending more than $10 million on TV ads, digital ads, mailers, voter turnout and canvassing.

(Emphasis in original.)

See Daniel Bice, New Musk mailer says Brad Schimel will ‘support President Trump’s agenda’ from bench, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 12, 2025.

Brad Schimel, circuit court judge, isn’t running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court; Trump’s dutiful foot soldier is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Trump will have to split his time between golfing, buying cars on the White House Lawn, and trying to stay awake during sessions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.


Dollar for dollar’: Canada announces 25% tariffs on nearly $30bn in US imports:

Canada’s finance minister, Dominic LeBlanc, announced retaliatory tariffs on US imports, including steel and aluminum, amid a growing trade war.

Daily Bread for 3.6.25: Mr. Trump’s Little Helper

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:21 and sunset is 5:50, for 11 hours, 29 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 49.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1967,  Joseph Stalin‘s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States. (She later moved to Wisconsin, and passed away in Richland Center.)


Brad Schimel, candidate for a seat of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, would be happy as a footstool for Trump:

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel told a group of canvassers in Waukesha County last weekend that he needs to be elected to provide a “support network” for President Donald Trump and shared  complaints about the 2020 election that have been frequently espoused by election deniers. 

In a video of the remarks, Schimel is speaking to a group of canvassers associated with Turning Point USA — a right-wing political group that has become increasingly active in Wisconsin’s Republican party. 

….

“Donald Trump doesn’t do this by himself, there has to be a support network around it,” Schimel said.

Which conspiracies are on Schimel’s mind? These:

Schimel pointed to the issue of special voting deputies in nursing homes as a major problem. 

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials known as special voting deputies who normally go into nursing homes to help residents cast absentee ballots were unable to enter those facilities. 

Republicans have claimed that decision allowed people who should have been ineligible to vote because they’d been declared incompetent to cast a ballot. Conspiracy theorists have pointed to affidavits filed by family members of nursing home residents that their relatives were able to vote. Only a judge can declare someone incompetent to vote, however. 

The issue led to the Republican sheriff of Racine County to accuse members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of committing felony election fraud and became a target in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely derided review of the 2020 election. 

Schimel also blamed the election commission’s decision to exclude the Green Party’s candidates from the ballot that year for Trump’s loss. WEC voted not to allow the party on the ballot because there were errors with the candidate’s addresses on the paperwork. The party sued to have the decision overturned, but the Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against the party because it was too close to the election. 

While conservatives held the majority on the Court at the time, Schimel  blamed liberals. 

See Henry Redman, Schimel tells canvassers he’ll be ‘support network’ for Trump and rehashes election conspiracies, Wisconsin Examiner, March 6, 2025.

See also FREE WHITEWATER, We Now Know that Schimel Has Lied at Least Once (Could Be More!) and Wisconsin Politico Swears He’s the Most Apolitical Man Alive.


If you’ve AppleTV+, then a recommendation: Berlin ER (Krank: Berlin). Here’s the trailer in the original German, with English subtitles:

Daily Bread for 3.5.25: No Time Like the Present for an Ad Against Musk

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with 42. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset is 5:49, for 11 hours, 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 38.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Starin Park Water Tower Committee meets at 6 PM and the Landmarks Commission meets at 7 PM.

On this day in 1770, at the Boston Massacre, five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War five years later.


I’m not a Democrat, but from my NeverTrump perspective, there’s no time like the present for a ‘People v Musk’ ad campaign:

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is working to tie state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel to Elon Musk with an ad campaign titled the “People v. Musk.”

The move comes as Musk’s prominence has grown in national politics for his role cutting government spending under President Donald Trump, and after groups backed by Musk have spent millions attacking Schimel’s opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford.

The first ad from what the state Democratic Party is calling a “seven-figure” campaign references the firing of air traffic controllers and federal funding cuts initiated by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The ad repeatedly shows video of video of Musk making a straight-armed gesture on the day of Trump’s inauguration.

See Rich Kremer, Democrats launch ‘People v Musk’ ad campaign in Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Wisconsin Public Radio, March 5, 2025.

It’s lawful to spend money on the race, and it’s lawful to criticize others for their spending on the race. Both are true.

Musk, however, is only appealing to people who will accept anything in the place of a good thing. Keep going.

See also FREE WHITEWATER, Musk’s PAC Puts in Six Figures for Schimel and Musk Drops More on Schimel in Wisconsin (Of Course He Does).


Eaglets:

Daily Bread for 3.4.25: Wisconsin, National Yet Again

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with afternoon showers and a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:25 and sunset is 5:48, for 11 hours, 23 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 27.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1944, after the success of Big Week, the USAAF begins a daylight bombing campaign of Berlin.


Wisconsin is a small Midwestern state of under six million people. She’s also a state that punches far above the weight of a small Midwestern state of under six million people. It’s true yet again:

President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk’s policies will get their first major test at the ballot box this spring in an election that will determine who controls the Wisconsin Supreme Court and shape the future of abortion rights and union power in the swing state.

Two years ago, liberals gained a 4-3 majority on the court after 15 years of conservative control. They threw out legislative maps that gave Republicans commanding majorities in the statehouse, reinstated the use of absentee ballot drop boxes and accepted cases that will decide whether abortion remains legal in the state.

But with a liberal justice retiring this year, conservatives now have a shot at regaining the majority. If they do not, liberals are poised to control the court until at least 2028, and interest groups are expected to file redistricting litigation that could give Democrats one or two more seats in Congress.

See Patrick Marley, Wisconsin Supreme Court race puts Trump and Musk at center stage, Washington Post, March 3, 2025.

See also FREE WHITEWATER, Musk’s PAC Puts in Six Figures for Schimel and Musk Drops More on Schimel in Wisconsin (Of Course He Does).


Firefighters struggle to contain seven-day wildfire in north-eastern Japan:

Firefighters are struggling to contain a wildfire in north-eastern Japan which has been burning for seven days. A number of homes have been burned in a small coastal town near Ofunato city in Iwate prefecture, and thousands of people have been evacuated. Largest wildfire in decades rages in Japan as authorities warn it could spread.

Daily Bread for 3.3.25: Wisconsin Politico Swears He’s the Most Apolitical Man Alive

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 51. Sunrise is 6:26 and sunset is 5:46, for 11 hours, 20 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1969, NASA launches Apollo 9 to test the lunar module.

By NASA / Russell L. Schweickart – Apollo archive (search by alternate ID number), Archive.org, Public Domain, Link

Political man running for a judicial office insists he’s not political at all:

[At Brad] Schimel’s “Hispanic roundtable” Thursday, the state Republican Party was fully engaged. Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Brian Schimming and former Republican candidate for attorney general Eric Toney were in attendance, rubbing elbows with the John Birch Society members. 

“Because people in this state and people in this city and people on the South Side need somebody who’s gonna have them top of mind and protecting victims and doing the right thing, stand up for the rule of law, all the things that we all want,” Schimming said. “And you would expect that would be easier for people to do, but it really takes somebody of great courage, somebody who’s honest and somebody who’s forthright, to step up at times like this.”

One attendee, filming Schimel’s remarks, wore #LoomersArmy hat, merch that can be purchased on the website of the Laura Loomer Fan Club. Loomer is a right-wing media personality and activist whom U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has called “extremely racist.” 

Schimel was introduced at the event by Marty Calderon and Mariano Garcia, two pastors on Milwaukee’s South Side who have been involved in the creation of the Republican Party’s office in the neighborhood. 

In his opening prayer, Garcia criticized Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ people.

See Henry Redman, Schimel preaches impartiality to right-wing groups, Wisconsin Examiner, March 3, 2025.

Schimel’s campaign is wholly political, and he’ll win or lose based on his strength with MAGA, Dark MAGA, Burnt Orange MAGA, Mango Tango1 MAGA, whatever.

See also FREE WHITEWATER, Could You Calm Down? But Wow, That Black Robe Looks Great on You…, We Now Know that Schimel Has Lied at Least Once (Could Be More!), and Brad Schimel’s Work Ethic.

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  1. Crayola never disappoints. ↩︎

Wildfires in North and South Carolina burn near homes:

Dozens of wildfires burning in South Carolina prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency.

Daily Bread for 3.2.25: Could You Calm Down? But Wow, That Black Robe Looks Great on You…

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 35. Sunrise is 6:28 and sunset is 5:46, for 11 hours, 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Public Domain, Link

On this day in 1933, the film King Kong premieres in Radio City Music Hall and RKO Roxy in New York City.


Brad Schimel’s political positions shift audience to audience, but he attracts a crowd among which expressions like ball and chain, little woman, the wife, and hausfrau are, let’s say, probably not uncommon. That’s his crowd, those are his people. He needs them in April.

And so, and so, there’s no surprise that he sees liberal women on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as overly emotional. Here’s Schimel on a radio show recorded in November:

“The other thing that I noted, there were times that when that camera went on several of the liberal justices, they were on the brink of losing it. You could see it in their eyes, and you could hear it in the tone of their voice,” he told conservative talker Meg Ellefson on WSAU-AM (550) and its sister stations in Wausau and Stevens Point. “They are being driven by their emotions. A Supreme Court justice had better be able to set their personal opinions and their emotions aside and rule on the law objectively. This is — we don’t have that objectivity on this court.”

(Emphasis in original.)

Asked about these remarks in February, Schimel was more specific:

“It’s plainly clear that that one of the justices, at least, was not able to stay objective. She had lost control of her emotions,” Schimel said after a roundtable talk at the GOP’s Hispanic center in Milwaukee. “Men do that, too, but she could not stay objective. In that case, she was literally yelling at an attorney.”

And which justice was that? Schimel clarified, “The one that was yelling at the attorney was Justice Karofsky. She was plainly yelling.”

See Daniel Bice, Was it sexist for Brad Schimel to say liberal justices, all women, were ‘driven by their emotions’?, February 28, 2025.

The oral argument was on 11.11.24; Justice Karofsky wasn’t yelling. She was conventionally and appropriately assertive, and no more so than many men on the bench in jurisdictions across the country. See Josh Kaul v. Joel Urmanski, 23AP2362 (Wis. Nov. 11, 2024) (oral argument) available at https://wiseye.org/2024/11/11/wisconsin-supreme-court-josh-kaul-v-joel-urmanski/.

It’s only ‘plainly clear‘ in Schimel’s mind, and the minds of those who share his outlook. Schimel knows that few in his crowd will review the full recording of oral argument at the court, and even if they were to do so, they’d not have a statewide or national context for what they saw.

They’ll simply take Schimel’s unreliable word for it.


FedEx cargo plane’s engine ignites in flames after bird strike:

Daily Bread for 2.28.25: We Now Know that Schimel Has Lied at Least Once (Could Be More!)

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:31 and sunset is 5:43, for 11 hours, 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1844,  a gun explodes on board the steam warship USS Princeton during a pleasure cruise down the Potomac River, killing six, including Secretary of State Abel Upshur. President John Tyler, who was also on board, was not injured from the blast.


Brad Schimel, a judge and candidate for a place on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, is pickled in politics. There’s not much more to him. And so, and so, he’ll say what he feels he needs to say, one audience to the next:

Schimel’s exposition of his judicial philosophy has shifted when he speaks to different audiences. 

Speaking to law students and Milwaukee voters at the Marquette event, when asked about federal judges’ role in thwarting Trump’s executive orders to end birthright citizenship, give Musk access to massive troves of personal data and stop congressionally appropriated funds from being disbursed, Schimel said it’s a judge’s role to define the limits of executive authority. 

“When there’s a dispute about whether that exercise of power is legitimate or not, well, then it may have to be the court that resolves that dispute,” he said. 

However, in a radio appearance with right wing host Vicki McKenna, he accused federal judges of “acting corruptly” for issuing temporary restraining orders against the dismantling of federal agencies.

See Henry Redman, Supreme Court candidate Schimel tells voters he’s not political, Wisconsin Examiner, February 27, 2025.

Photo by Miracle Seltzer on Unsplash

See also @ FREE WHITEWATER, Brad Schimel Experiences the Insatiable Nature of Populism and Brad Schimel’s Work Ethic.


See Blue Ghost’s amazing view of the moon from 62 miles up:

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander captured stunning views of the moon from about 62 miles (100 km) above the surface. The footage, sped up 10 times, was captured on Feb. 24, 2025 during its third orbital maneuver.

Daily Bread for 2.24.25: Brad Schimel Experiences the Insatiable Nature of Populism

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset is 5:58, for 11 hours 0 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 6 PM, and resumes open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1917, the U.S. ambassador Walter Hines Page to the United Kingdom reports to Pres. Wilson on the contents of the German Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declared war on the United States.


Populism is a restless and relentless group movement, historically sometimes of the left, sometimes of the right. In our time, we have conservative populists, Trumpists, MAGA, or however else they choose to describe themselves. Their restlessness, their insatiability for ever-purer expressions of the movement, leads to splintering into new factions. (Dark MAGA is like this: Trump no longer gives some of these gentlemen the thrill that Musk now does.)

Nor does a moment like this does respect institutional boundaries; on the contrary, it seeks to overturn institutional standards no matter how sound.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, much the MAGA man, now finds that other populists really don’t care much for the WISGOP institutionalism on which his campaign depends:

WASHINGTON – At a recent campaign stop, conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel acknowledged a “turf war” playing out among Wisconsin Republicans.

He said the party is “at risk of becoming divided” but suggested the time to have those discussions is after the high court election on April 1.

“This battle is going on,” Schimel said, according to audio obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “My message to everybody is … I need 100% of the conservative vote. We all have to grab an oar and work at this. If we don’t, we lose.”

“So can you shut it down for 49 more days, and let’s win this race,” he added. “And then you know what? Then duke it out.”

The infighting Schimel referenced is a behind-the-scenes clash between the conservative dark money group Turning Point Action and the Republican Party of Wisconsin. 

The simmering tensions between the two camps are largely over the party’s infrastructure and leadership in the key battleground state. It’s a spat that has grown increasingly public following the November election and appears to be coming to a head as county parties and congressional districts elect their leadership for the next two years.  

See Lawrence Andrea, Behind the scenes of the Supreme Court race, a ‘turf war’ simmers between Wisconsin GOP and Turning Point, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 24, 2025.

In his plea, Schimel reveals himself a nervous politico first, and a judge second. That’s unsurprising, because he admits that as a judge, he’s been slothful. See Brad Schimel’s Work Ethic (“I’m home for dinner most nights now,” he said. “I shoot in two sporting clays leagues. Or I was until I made this announcement (to run for the Supreme Court). I was shooting in two shooting clays leagues a week. I was doing all this, playing band rehearsals.”)

Schimel’s concern reminds one of the oft-repeated story of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party:

From an October 2015 tweet by Adrian Bott (@cavalorn) that went viral: “I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.


How AI is revealing the language of the birds:

Researchers have been eavesdropping on an unusual family of crows in Spain, collecting data on hundreds of thousands of different sounds the birds made. Small microphones recorded a variety of soft calls, far quieter than the familiar ‘caws’ people usually hear. The team then used AI to analyse the sounds and group them together. The researchers hope is to one day be able to understand the meaning of the birds’ vocalizations and perhaps even try to speak their language.

Daily Bread for 1.12.25: Brad Schimel’s Work Ethic

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy & windy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:43, for 9 hours, 19 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1969, the New York Jets defeat the Baltimore Colts to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history.


Hardest-working man in Wisconsin, Schimel Campaign website, screenshot from 1.12.25

Sometimes, before a friendly group, a man will admit how slothful he truly is:

But [Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate] Schimel suggested there are other perks to being a judge than having your own potty.

“You set your own hours,” Schimel said. “I set the hours. Certainly, I’ve got to get my cases done, but I can decide — you know what? — if I want to do golf on Thursday afternoon, I can do that.”

The same, Schimel said, is not true for lawyers, who have to show up in court when told to do so. He said he doesn’t misuse that power. And, he said, there are times he’s had to work “all day and into the evening.”

But that appears to be the exception.

“I’m home for dinner most nights now,” he said. “I shoot in two sporting clays leagues. Or I was until I made this announcement (to run for the Supreme Court). I was shooting in two shooting clays leagues a week. I was doing all this, playing band rehearsals.”

See Daniel Bice, Brad Schimel boasts he gets a private bathroom and sets own hours as judge, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 10, 2025.


Wolves traveling through deep snow: