Readers of FREE WHITEWATER know how much I like cats, as do all decent, normal people. Here’s a video of a cat and two of her kittens on a slide. Enjoy.

Hat tip to Instapundit.com for the link. more >>

Doubt not the agricultural prowess of America’s Dairyland. We’re the cheese capital of America, single-handedly producing twenty-six percent of the country’s total cheese output in 2009.

See, Wisconsin Still the Cheesiest.

I posted yesterday on the immoral and disordered policy of John Chianelli, Milwaukee County’s mental health director. Chianelli has implemented a plan to house female mental patients with male ones, with the supposed goal of trading the risk of male-on-male physical violence for male-on-female sexual assault. The policy of trading injury this way among mental health patients, rather than a commitment to reducing all violence, isn’t just immoral, but perversely so. See, A Milwaukee County Bureaucrat’s Immoral Utilitarianism.

Chianelli is unfit to serve in a position of such decision-making, and should be removed. Those who fail to remove him share in the responsibility — and deserved obloquy — of Chianelli’s policy. I am convinced that it would be impossible for a person of sound judgment to support any official who had the power to remove Chianelli and did not do so. Officials like this place others at risk, and disgrace Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, with a policy that’s fundamentally wrong. Those who endure an official like Chianelli, whose policy should be anathema to anyone of normal sense, without protesting disgrace themselves.

(It’s possible that there might be some position, without decision-making authority, and under careful supervision of others, where Chianelli might still work. It cannot be, soundly, in his present role. I would doubt that he should ever be given decision-making authority over others.)

Fortunately, three Milwaukee County supervisors now called for Chianelli’s ouster. In doing so, they have acted on behalf of institutionalized patients. They could be expected to do no less. See, Supervisors call for firing of county mental health chief.

Here’s more from the latest Journal Sentinel story:

Jon Gudeman, former medical director at the county’s psychiatric hospital, said Monday that the county immediately must set up a ward where patients who are aggressive can be held separately.

Problems scrutinized

Sexual assaults of patients, by patients, brought the issue of Chianelli’s job performance to the forefront. A federal report listed multiple instances of improper sexual contact among patients at the complex in 2009.

Supervisors also were critical of Chianelli’s failure to promptly notify supervisors of the assaults last year and a federal investigation in January. De Bruin also faulted Chianelli for failing to provide reports ordered by the County Board on how acute psychiatric patients are housed and for belatedly notifying the board late last year of a $3.6 million deficit in his division.

Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably,

Milwaukee county’s County Executive Scott Walker on Monday defended the county’s practice of combining male and female psychiatric patients in its locked wards. He said other public psychiatric hospitals in the state have mixed units, except the state’s Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison.

“Many experts believe this policy is good for treatment as clients prepare to return to the community,” Walker said in an e-mail. He said that policy would be reviewed “to ensure that it is best for the clients.”

Walker did not respond to the call for Chianelli’s replacement. Walker chief of staff Tom Nardelli, in a written response, said “potential disciplinary action” was under review. He said the County Board leadership had been kept fully informed on mental health issues.

The Mental Health Complex is the subject of several ongoing investigations. A comprehensive state and federal inspection is under way, and a county audit of issues surrounding the assaults started last week. Reports on those reviews aren’t expected for months. Disability Rights Wisconsin, the state-designated patient advocacy agency, is expected to issue preliminary findings of its investigation this month.

In addition, several state legislators are seeking a state audit of the complex.

Walker’s county has a facility with a rising number of sexual assaults, and yet he defends the practice of mixing male and female mental patients — including violent ones — as a way to “prepare [them] to return to the community.”

I would ask Walker what sort of community he has in mind. I can assure him it is not one in which a normal person would wish to live. I have sympathy for anyone who has to endure the imposition of this policy.

Walker’s response is both predictable and discouraging. To lead a state in troubled times, especially, he will require better judgment than he’s yet shown on this matter.

Like most people, I’ve heard the expression that leopards don’t change their spots. It’s so commonplace that I can’t remember when I first heard it.

Here’s a picture of a leopard, with a characteristic, spotted coat.

Impressive.

I’d guess that if the photographer went back the next day, and took another picture, the spots would be in the same places. A week or month later, and the result would be the same: spots in place, not having moved.

One knows, though, that’s not what the expression means; the declaration is not about the outside of a leopard, but about its inside. The fundamental instincts of Panthera pardus don’t change, even through attempts at taming. A carnivore remains a carnivore; the taste for meat cannot be abated through circus training. The desire inside stays immutable.

One knows, too, that the expression isn’t really about leopards, but about men and women. It’s an underlying contention that human nature is immutable. There may be changes in a person’s life, moments that transform, to the betterment of the person. For the most part, though, many people stay the same.

They stay the same on account of a fundamental nature, but also from institutional and organizational cosseting — bolstered in narrow views, shielded from contrary points of view, encouraged to the point of being patronized — all a recipe for business as usual. Business as usual amounts to, and remains, business-as-self-interest, business-as-personal agenda, or business-as-status quo-defense.

One cannot fault a leopard for its unchanging appearance, or instincts; people-as-leopards, though, will always be a different, troubling situation.

The remedy, apart from personal transformation, is a society that allows, that encourages, free expression and debate. There will be no penultimate or ultimate moments in this debate, no final resolutions.

There is just the daily work of reading, reflecting, and writing. A good politics is an ongoing politics, and like it, good commentary is ongoing.

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there’s a shocking story entitled, “Mental Health Exec Defends Sex Crime Risk,” about the dangerous practice of placing female mental patients with male mental patients. John Chianelli, the county administrator of the Behavioral Health Division,

told county supervisors during a closed-door session last month that segregating men and women would result in more violence.

“It’s a trade-off,” he said. “Putting 24 aggressive male patients into a male-only unit would increase the level of violence in the unit.”

Chianelli’s remarks came during a County Board committee called into closed session on April 14 to find out why there are reports of an increasing number of sexual assaults at the county facility, including the rape of a 22-year-old pregnant woman last summer.

His comments are detailed in a four-page letter by Supervisor Lynne De Bruin recapping points he made at the closed session. Two other supervisors who attended the meeting of the County Board’s Health and Human Needs Committee verified the account.

The Journal Sentinel obtained the letter through a request under the state’s open records law.

The trade-off Chianelli’s talking about is his decision to place women at risk of sexual assault from men, supposedly to reduce the risk of physical assaults between men otherwise segregated in a male-only ward.

It’s not as though Chianelli ignores the risk of female patients being raped — he’s well aware of that risk, and was willing to impose it on female patients:

Chianelli defended mixed-gender units as a way to reduce the likelihood of violence by male patients against other male patients. He also conceded that such units at the Mental Health Complex “cause more sexual problems,” De Bruin’s letter says.

Chianelli reviewed medical literature and found, “Going to gender-based units trades violence for sexual assaults.”

County supervisors called Chianelli into a meeting to discuss that case and the overall policy of sexual contact between patients. According to De Bruin’s letter and the remarks of other supervisors at the meeting, Chianelli told them that patients had a right to express themselves sexually. De Bruin agreed but said that right ends when they are placed in the county’s acute psychiatric unit. A large majority of those patients are involuntarily committed.

Such conditions would be horrific for anyone, but consider these patients’ particular circumstances: most are involuntarily committed, due to the extreme nature of their disorders. Expressing themselves, some against others, through rape is no “expression” that Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, or America should ever countenance.

(Coincidentally, there’s a post at the blog Volokh Conspiracy that proposes a way to reduce prison assaults: segregate same gender inmates by size and weight to reduce the incidence of assaults. Note the distinction: the moral course is to reduce assaults, not engineer a so-called trade-off. There’s no acceptable trade to be had.)

It’s hard to overestimate the immorality of Chianelli’s policy, of this cold utilitarian, deciding for someone’s safety over another’s, rather than moving all the world to reduce violence wherever he sees it. A man who should be dedicated to improving the conditions of each and every mental patient instead trades the safety of some for that of others.

One does not have to speculate, but instead should readily see, that Chianelli’s willingness to trade the safety of female patients so blithely has both an immorality and a perversity to it.

Immoral as it does not respect the rights of any individual involuntarily confined as a mental patient, but also perverse because it shows a disordered confusion between expression and sexual assault.

Chianelli’s theory, and its implementation, is profoundly wrong.

I seldom call for someone’s resignation from office, although I have said that some officeholders are undeserving of their positions.

Chianelli’s disregard for the safety of mental patients as individuals makes him unfit to serve. He should be removed at the earliest opportunity, never to return to a similar position of authority. Though he might serve in other ways, he has shown himself incapable of the judgment his current position requires.

(The story notes that Chianelli has now sought legal counsel. I’m sure he will need a lawyer; he could use a course or two in moral philosophy while he’s at it.)

Those in government who would allow Chianelli to continue in office would bear culpability for failing to address adequately his egregious errors. In doing so, they, too, would share some responsibility for both Chianelli’s immoral and perverse policy, and its consequences.

In this one sees a test: Will government do the right thing, and act swiftly and comprehensively, or will it merely turn away and hope memories fade?