Two committees of the Dane County Board of Supervisors are meeting tonight to gather information on the performance of the Dane County 911 Communications Center in the wake of the murder of Brittany Zimmermann.

Board Chair Scott McDonell and others have called for an audit of the Center focusing on its procedures and whether its procedures are being followed.

It is suggested that such an audit be conducted by an outside firm, free of political considerations.

Good idea.

To complement this reasonable course of action, Dane County needs the establishment of a paid citizens' committee composed of broad communities of interests, devoid of elected officials, and certainly free of civil servants in Dane County, including those serving in the County Executive's office.

Such a committee ought to have as its deliverables:

- The establishment of specific directives to improve the performance of the 911 Communications Center

The U.S. Army has developed architectural drawings for a "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club Resort" for a planned "zone of influence" in Baghdad, and the Boston Herald is reporting that the plans have the support of the Pentagon.

There are also plans for an amusement park.

There are many appaling questions that deserve answers about this given the lack of electricity, running water, civil war atmosphere, much less who will maintain security for people standing in line to ride a rollercoaster in a war zone.

"Contractors hired to rebuild the country’s infrastructure or provide security have overcharged the U.S. for everything from soft drinks—$45 a can—to gasoline. Millions of dollars in no-bid reconstruction contracts were diverted to things such as Super Bowl tickets, prostitutes, watches, and jewelry. And much of the reconstruction work has been substandard. The U.S., for example, paid $72 million to Parsons, a U.S. contractor, to build a police academy in Baghdad. But the building was so badly put together that raw sewage seeps from its walls and ceilings. “This became the lens through which Iraqis now see America—incompetence, profiteering, arrogance,” said House Democrat Henry Waxman of California, a vocal critic of the war."

There's more at The Week Magazine. 

Wow.

HRC's top strategist Mark Penn thought the democratic primary races were a winner-take-all affair. He didn't know that for the past twenty years, it's been proportional representation.

The republican primary race is structured as winner-take-all.

This critical misunderstanding makes sense if you consider Mark Penn is a republican and his PR firm is co-owned by McCain's chief strategist.

Time magazine details HRC's other mistakes.

Amid the discordant political backdrop, recriminations abound about whether the murder of a 21-year-old UW-Madison woman could have been prevented.

Aside from proposed audits and spirited defenses of the Dane County 911 Communications Center and other Dane County officials, it's worth noting the priorities and policies of local law enforcement agencies here. [I hope not to read the word 'leadership' again; it doesn't exist on this matter.]

As the routine break-up of house parties and the pursuit by police of other frequent illegal college recreational pastimes continues apace here, one wonders if police officers foot-patrolling neighborhoods at night with the objective of protecting property and persons might be a better use of limited police resources vis-a-vis busting a 19-year-old for having a beer or smoking a joint on campus.

And one less parking meter boy (like that pathetic guy who wears the floppy safari hat), and one more officer walking on the street looking out for a female student walking home at night from the library would certainly do.

The Dane County Sheriff's Department endorsed Kathleen Falk when she ran for Attorney General in 2006.

Now, former Dane County Sheriff's Deputy and current Dane County 911 Center Director Joe Norwick has been loudly, and justifiably criticized for the handling of Brittany Zimmermann's call for help. 

It doesn't help that Norwick had no public safety management experience on the level his current position requires. That stands in sharp contrast to this:

“We searched far and wide, and found the best candidate here at home,” Falk said of Norwick.

Is Falk's support of him payback for a past political endorsement?

Do you know what happened in Indiana Tuesday thanks to their adoption of voter ID laws upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court?

Nuns were denied the right to vote. They were in their 80s and 90s and lived in the same residence for most of their lives across the street from Notre Dame University.

And State Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) would like to ensure Wisconsin nuns, the elderly, and disabled get the same treatment.

"It is time that we get this passed here in Wisconsin," growled Stone, who for years has worked to erect barriers to voter participation. "There are no excuses left for not having this as part of our election process." (Capital Times)

So far, Wisconsin's voter ID law is on hold as republicans contemplate how to change the state constitution to get around Governor Doyle's veto power.

Get Uppity!

Ask Jeff Stone why his party wants to disenfranchise Wisconsin voters!

Rep.Stone [at] legis [dot] wisconsin [dot] gov

Progressives are holding Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk’s feet to the fire on the Brittany Zimmerman tragedy.

If Falk decides to run for reelection as Dane County executive in the spring of 2009, she will surely face opponents in a politically charged race, and one gets the impression Falk is abundantly aware of this fact.

From the Capital Times (aggressively on the Zimmerman story now and catching up to the first-rate reporting and insights by Isthmus, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Madison blogosphere):

A former dispatcher that answered a 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone before she was allegedly stabbed to death in her West Doty Street apartment committed two different procedural errors in handling the call, according to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.

Falk’s statement on the 911 call, "I do not believe, had the (911) errors not occurred, that her murder could've been prevented," amounts to a Bushian I-can’t-tell-you-anything-but-trust-me assurance.

Is the U.S. Treasury, which can't print money fast enough to pay for the trillion-dollar tragedy in Iraq, about to give an economic stimulus to peace organizations working to stop the war?

It seems highly unlikely, but if it doesn't happen it won't be because the antiwar folks haven't tried.  Many seem to be on the same wave length as an email I received yesterday from United for Peace and Justice:

Spend your stimulus check on peace! The sooner the war ends, the more money the nation saves. Not to mention the lives and futures of millions of people. So let's use the stimulus money to stop the war, bring all of the troops home and get the nation's budget back on track.

We invite you to spend your stimulus check, or some portion of it, on the one thing the Bush administration doesn't want you to invest in: Help strengthen the peace and justice movement!

It's nice that Executrix Falk is apologizing to the Zimmermann family a month after it was revealed their daughter called 911 and got no help.  

And now, Dane County Executrix Falk could restore some citizen faith in the 911 Call Center operations, you know, show some political backbone that she presumably had enough of to run for the governor's seat, and throw the State Attorney General's race to J.B. Van Hollen. But, here's what we get instead:

"Falk plans to instruct Dane County 911 director Joe Norwick on Tuesday as to what steps need to be taken to assure that a similar situation does not occur in the future, and has also told Norwick that she expects to be updated regularly on events in the 911 center ..."

They'll discipline someone when the 911 call center finishes its now month-plus long internal investigation of what they did wrong ... ah yes, a report by the same foxes guarding hen houses that never revealed Zimmermann's call for help in the first place.