Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 7:09 PM, for 12h 16m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred sixty-third day.
On this day in 1765, Britain passes the Stamp Act with an effective date of November 1, 1765:
an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a direct tax on the British colonies and plantations in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.[1][2] Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.[3]
Recommended for reading in full:
In a comment last night, Joe highlights the big developments on Thursday in Wisconsin politics (and law, truly). The first of those was developments was an injunction against legislation from last year’s lame-duck session. A story and the decision and order in that case (one of four challenging the lame-duck session) appear below.
Mark Sommerhauser reports Judge blocks GOP lame-duck laws limiting Tony Evers’ powers; Evers seeks to remove Wisconsin from Obamacare challenge:
In a rebuke to Republican legislators, a Dane County judge on Thursday blocked enforcement of laws enacted in December that curtailed the powers of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general.
Immediately after the ruling, Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul sought to do at least one thing the laws had barred: withdrawing Wisconsin from multi-state legal challenges to the federal health care law known as Obamacare.
Republican legislative leaders promised to swiftly appeal the ruling, issued Thursday morning by Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess. They contend it throws state government into chaos by raising questions about the validity of laws passed in prior extraordinary sessions.
….
But such sessions are not authorized by the state Constitution or state law, Niess wrote in his ruling. The Legislature adopted a joint rule permitting them in the 1977 session, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
“There can be no justification for enforcement of the unconstitutional legislative actions emanating from the December 2018 ‘extraordinary session’ that is consistent with the rule of law,” Niess wrote.
In addition to the lame-duck laws, Niess’ ruling also vacates, during the session, 82 nominees and appointees to state boards and councils made by former Gov. Scott Walker.
Hours after the ruling on Thursday afternoon, Kaul asked federal judges to dismiss Wisconsin from two anti-Obamacare lawsuits the state backed under former GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel. It remained unclear late Thursday when federal courts might grant Kaul’s requests.
See Decision and Order:
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019cv.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]