Even the far-right doesn’t like the Wisconsin GOP’s attack on open records laws

Ladies and gentlemen, hell has frozen over.

For once, I’ve found myself on the same side of an issue as the MacIver Institute, a far-right political think tank with ties to the billionaire Koch Brothers, and Christian Schneider, a far-right political columnist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin. That’s because the Republican members of the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC) passed “Motion #999”, an omnibus committee motion to attach, among other things, a provision exempting “deliberative materials” like legislative drafts and legislative briefings from Wisconsin’s open records laws, to the Wisconsin state budget on a party-line vote. A total of 16 Wisconsin state legislators, 12 Republicans and 4 Democrats, sit on the JFC.

Here’s the full Motion #999; the provision in question is provision #28, located on pages 9 and 10 of the PDF file linked to in this sentence.

This is an actual MacIver Institute video criticizing the gutting of Wisconsin’s open records laws by the JFC:

When the MacIver Institute finds itself siding with State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) on an issue, you know that Republican legislators in Wisconsin have done something truly heinous. Remember that the MacIver Institute once filed an open records lawsuit against Erpenbach as part of a right-wing political witchhunt against him and won their case in court.

These are actual tweets by Christian Schneider sharply criticizing the Republicans’ move to gut Wisconsin’s open records laws, citing his experience as a state legislative staffer:

I am available for hire as the WI GOP's VP of Common Sense. The provision to hide bill drafts is the dumbest thing they will pass this year.

— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) July 2, 2015

As a leg. staffer for 8 years, I never found the open records law to be cumbersome or intrusive. Everyone knows their e-mails are public.

— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) July 3, 2015

Republicans won't be in office forever, and trying to track future Dem bills under new rules will be infuriating. #wibudget

— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) July 3, 2015

I write about Leg. history a lot, and there's nothing more fun than piecing together how a bill passed 100 years ago. Now that's in peril.

— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) July 3, 2015

Schneider is certainly no liberal. He’s one of the most conservative figures in the usually very right-wing corporate media in Wisconsin, including writing a piece for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel website that repeated the lies of Kyle Wood, a Republican campaign volunteer who falsely claimed to have been physically assaulted because he’s openly gay and refused to support Mark Pocan during his successful 2012 congressional campaign. The piece in question has long since been removed from the Journal-Sentinel website.

The move by Republican state legislators to gut open records laws in Wisconsin is so asinine, even some of the most conservative people and groups in Wisconsin are opposed to it.

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Why I’m calling for the U.S. Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation against Hillary Clinton

The New York Times is reporting that then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party’s preferred presidential candidate in the upcoming presidential election, used a personal email account to conduct official U.S. State Department business during her four-year tenure as head of the State Department, possibly in violation of federal record-keeping laws:

Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.

It appears to me that Hillary Clinton violated federal law by using a personal email address to conduct official correspondence without having the emails preserved on government servers. The U.S. Justice Department should launch a criminal investigation to determine whether or not Hillary violated federal record-keeping laws, and, if so, file appropriate criminal charges against Hillary and prosecute her to the fullest and fairest extent. Additionally, Bernie Sanders should run for the Democratic presidential nomination and attack Hillary over her use of a personal email account for government correspondence.