I’m back on The BradCast today after a much-need July 4 weekend respite! My huge thanks to Nicole Sandler of RadioOrNot.com for filling in for me yesterday!
While Nicole covered some important items that might have otherwise disappeared into the holiday weekend news hole, there was at least one notable story that she missed, which a few folks in Wisconsin — specifically, Gov. Scott Walker (R) and his allies in the state legislature — had hoped nobody would notice: their blatant attempt to completely gut the state’s beloved Open Records law.
“This was an effort by Walker and some Republicans in the legislature to undermine open government in the dead of night,” my guest today, Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy tells me. And it was done, he suggests, in hopes of keeping piles of fresh baggage from making its way into the mainstream media as Walker — whose entire career now seems to be predicated on secrecy and lack of transparency — prepares to announce his candidacy for the GOP Presidential nomination in a week or so.
What the Badger State’s Republican-dominated legislature tried to pull off over the weekend was extraordinary. “There was no public statement whatsoever,” Fischer explains. “This was introduced, through this last minute budget amendment that was passed on the evening of the holiday weekend. There was no public debate. This was something they tried to do in the dead of night.”
Fischer also catches us up on the status of several other cases now pending against Walker and/or his closest allies, including one that is set to face a crucial ruling shortly by the state’s Supreme Court. That challenge in that case, known as “John Doe 2”, is being brought by the largest financial supporters of both Walker’s and several of the court’s elected(!) Republican Justices!
Also today: We catch up after the holiday weekend on the latest developments in Greece and with Trump, marriage, the Confederate flag and more!…
While the “closed-records” proposal was quickly pulled from the budget bill (in which it had no business being in the first place), other nasty proposals remain intact, undeleted, to be voted on by the full Assembly Wed. July 8 (later today, as I write).