Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 17m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 2 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School Board meets in closed session at 6 PM.
On this day in 1944, the Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.
If you’re hoping for a place of less public litigation, then Wisconsin’s going to disappoint. We’ve quite a bit of litigation, where quite a bit is simply a gentler way of saying Michael Gableman is eating the state bite by bite because of his shambolic investigation. Shawn Johnson reports A year in, legal fight over Gableman election investigation keeps growing:
“The investigation has become a morass of competing lawsuits back and forth between different parties in the state and outside the state,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And those legal debates have sort of overtaken the substance of the investigation itself.”
….
The list of cases connected to Gableman’s investigation includes:
An open records lawsuit before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington brought by American Oversight against Gableman’s Office of Special Counsel, Vos, the Assembly Chief Clerk and the Wisconsin Assembly. Earlier this year, Remington ordered Gableman to produce a copy of his contract and ordered some records immediately released. More recently he found Gableman in contempt of court, fining him $2,000 per day. Remington also referred Gableman to Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation. An appeal, filed by lawyers for Gableman, of Remington’s contempt ruling. Gableman’s lawyers have also appealed a Remington ruling from earlier this year. An open records lawsuit filed by American Oversight against Vos before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn. Earlier this year, Bailey-Rihn found Vos in contempt of court but gave the speaker a chance to “purge” that contempt by complying with court orders. This month, Bailey-Rihn lifted her contempt order against Vos. She scheduled an oral ruling in the case for July 21. Another open records lawsuit before Judge Bailey-Rihn, this one filed by American Oversight against Vos, Assembly Chief Clerk Ted Blazel and the Wisconsin Assembly. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for July 28. Gableman’s big subpoena case against the mayors of Madison, Green Bay and Racine, as well as Democratic Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs and several election workers. That case, which is before Waukesha County Judge Ralph Ramirez, was delayed after Gableman’s office expanded his subpoenas to include more people and threaten them with jail time. A case challenging Gableman’s subpoena power, this one filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul in Dane County Circuit Court against the Wisconsin Assembly, Vos and Gableman among others. Kaul asked Judge Rhonda Lanford to block Gableman’s subpoenas, and while she’s yet to take that step, she indicated that she could if he tried to enforce them. Vos also tried to get state appeals courts to intervene in the case and was denied. The Wisconsin Supreme Court also denied a “petition for supervisory writ” filed by Vos. American Oversight’s most recent lawsuit filed against Gableman’s Office of Special Counsel. While most of the cases remain in circuit court, they could eventually be appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where Gableman once served. Conservative swing Justice Brian Hagedorn once clerked for Gableman on the court.
How much longer can Gableman feast on the public? There is, after all, a limit to gluttony:
Partial solar eclipse only seen in space – NASA spacecraft’s view: