"What are you in for?" "Selling crack outside an elementary school. You?" "Coming home from getting married in San Francisco."Julaine Appling, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Family Council, said the statutes are clear and the law should be enforced.

"If it were challenged and the courts decided to basically wink at it, and refused to enforce [sic] the law, we have a problem," she said.Good luck with that. The statutes Ms. Appling is referring to are meant to discourage bigamy or the marriage of first cousins except where one of the first cousins is a female over the age of 55 or where either first cousin is permanently sterile.

Whether the statutes would find application under the Wisconsin constitution's marriage amendment is an open question and in the unlikely event a prosecutor sought to enforce them, I expect lawyers would be lining up to offer pro bono defense. And winning.

Source.*

See also: "I think we’ve been extremely tolerant in allowing them to live wherever they choose" — Julaine Appling.

* Why can't reporters ever report the statutes they're reporting on? It's Wis. Stat. § 765.04(1) and the penalty is at § 765.30(1).

Epic Systems, the big medical software company building a campus just outside of Verona proper, has laid down the law to its building contractor, J.P. Cullen & Sons.

Epic has told J.P. Cullen that if it wants to keep wetting its beak in a construction project expected to total a half-billion dollars before it is through, it will have to wear, like an Ed Gein mask, Epic’s politics.And in offer of proof for this alleged corporate telling?

Nothing. (The link is to a dictionary of construction terms.)

Behold the balance of David Blaska's baseless drivel. Does he get paid to fabricate rubbish? Or does being a conservative in Madison confer special license to be that much more of an embarrassing dissembler?

Still waiting for somebody — anybody — to make the case for a causal connection between Epic's informal procurement protocol and J.P. Cullen's withdrawal from WMC with something other than pure speculation and unsupported inference ...

My friend capper has inaugurated a new blog, Cognitive Dissidence, and for his initial contribution discusses a controversial U.S. Army recruiting station at Summerfest.

The controversy arose over the presence of a computer game, America's Army: Special Forces, where 13-year-old kids could mount a Humvee and spray machine gun fire at full-size virtual human beings.

The exhibit is advertised in Summerfest's official guide as "Experiential marketing, a unique venue for discovering and interacting with brands." And then machine gunning them to death.

There was something of an outcry yesterday and reportedly the Summerfest Army has since substituted "targets" for the human figures as well as restricting entrance to the age of majority (18).

Reliable sources inform me that Milwaukee's medium wave talking orangutan Charlie Sykes spent the better part of two hours in the morning* crying over the objections to the exhibit because, you know, every music festival should include an opportunity for seventh-graders to pretend at killing people with machine guns.

Last year, it was the right-nut wing going appropriately ballistic over an appearance at Summerfest by the hip hop performer Ludacris, which they predicted would instigate a reenactment of Detroit 1967. Needless to say, nothing even remotely of the sort occurred.

I have a better suggestion for the Summerfest Army. Never mind the targets, just reconfigure the life-size humans to resemble bespectacled, hair-helmeted AM radio squawkers running back and forth parroting GOP talking points so we can all get in on the fun.

From whence the protests might emanate then, I wonder.

* And is weeping copiously still. Accolades are being extended to the initial objectors, but I reserve mine for those who can actually stomach listening to that idiot for more than a minute or two.

I keep meaning to toss a kudo or several the way of the Milwaukee Federalist Society, whose weblog here is maintained by Terrence Berres, an occasional commenter at this location and at the Shark's lair with an especially dry and therefore winning sense of humor.

While I likely wouldn't be caught dead at a Federalist Society shindig — not even to pilfer the brownies — Mr. Berres's weblog is a very useful one-stop shopping repository of Wisconsin State court opinions complete with links to relevant commentary and so forth.

I also just noticed the other day that one of Mr. Berres's colleagues, David Ziemer, is a contributor to the Wisconsin Law Journal,* where he produced a good piece about a case called State v. Jensen and its future in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Giles v. California that I've written about a number of times here.

A very highly recommended local blog, and much appreciated.

* Hard copy subscriptions: $500-plus per annum.

Here's another amusing thread courtesy of our friend Dad29, in which he accuses me of "misquoting" a two-paragraph item in the Chicago Tribune the other day.

Apparently he thinks I missed the part where the Archdiocese's spokesmodel described prayers for transgendered human beings as "inimical" to Church teaching. Trouble is, I specifically mentioned that part.

I wondered how come entire Catholic Masses for dogs dressed as babies and clowns might be celebrated, but the Chicago Archdiocese deems it "not possible" to even mention transgendered human beings for prayerful purposes on Church property.

And it's "not possible" because it's "inimical" to Church teaching. Yeah, I got that, and mentioned it. There was no misquoting.

I'm admonished by an apparent Defender of the Faith that, "Any parish that holds those Masses [for dogs dressed as clowns] doesn't understand the teaching of the Church on the sacredness of liturgy. Or much else."

Yet according to the collection of wild-eyed heretics at Catholic.org, there are prayers for not only animals — alive, diseased, and dead — but a variety of inanimate objects, such as bedrooms, cornerstones of buildings, and even bacon:Bless, O Lord, this lard (or bacon), that it may be an effective remedy for the human race, and grant that through the invocation of Thy holy name all those who eat of it may obtain health of body and protection of their souls. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.So, Catholics may pray for bacon (or lard) but not for transgendered human beings. Bacon! Which is something that not even Jesus as an adherent to Jewish dietary proscriptions would have eaten.

Why a slab of cured and sulfite-infused pig meat merits prayer but not an actual, living human being who may have happened to have been born with ambiguous genitalia according to God's Divine Plan strikes me as just a bit, well, odd, to say the least.

Maybe the healing properties of lard (or bacon) can cure teh gay?

Celebrate your favorite Canadians.

I choose Joni Mitchell and The Band (save Levon Helm, who came from Arkansas with Ronnie Hawkins, but we'll let him hang out).

Coyote

Early on in the most recent Supreme Court race, WMC put Justice Louis Butler in its sights simply because he had demonstrated a taste for judicial activism, particularly aimed at the business liability [sic].Which is why WMC's ad campaign concentrated on — and falsely portrayed, at the expense of the U.S. Constitution by distorting its system of justice — Butler's record in adjudicating criminal appeals.

Judith Faulkner owes success to WMC.

So, let's see. You deliberately distort a respected judge's record in criminal cases when you don't care for his dispositions in civil ones, and one day Wisconsin is America's tax hell and its "Alabama North" and the next it's the best environment for companies like Epic Systems to thrive in. I guess you have to get pretty deep down in the free market think tank to come up with stuff like that, thus the attendant confusion and memory loss is understandable.

I often get a huge kick out of our favorite Brookfield curmudgeon Dad29, but I'm concerned he's losing his grip on reality as we know it here (not that it was anything except tenuous to begin with).

* By its acronym, this common conservative affliction is interchangeable with "Souter Derangement Syndrome," or, to opposite symptom and effect, "Scalia Derangement Syndrome."

From Chief Justice John Roberts's dissenting opinion in Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., decided June 23:The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose.

Nice try. Best stick to the light operetta, C.J.

But who cares when you're more interested in running video footage of a bloodied, suicided corpse laying on a Manhattan street accompanied by breathless "legal" speculation,* eh Geraldo?

* Several orders of magnitude more offensive than any corpse.

Epic has not run a press release for 18 years. In fact, the only advertising the company has sponsored was a billboard with the slogan, "Marketing Sucks ... Epic Systems."The notoriously publicity-averse Judith R. Faulkner made very positive news last week with her principled stand against a business association, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and its opprobrious conduct during last winter's State election campaign.

Ms. Faulkner is a remarkable entrepreneur. She founded Epic Systems, a developer of healthcare information software, in 1979 with $6,000 and last year its sales topped $500 million. She remains in firm control of the privately held operation, which employs more than 3,000 and is looking for many more.

Judith Faulkner, much like a lot of us, didn't take kindly to the numerous and varied deceits that WMC produced attacking a sitting Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Louis Butler.

Last Wednesday, Epic published a statement referring to the campaign as a "travesty of ethics" and suggesting that WMC was largely responsible.

On Friday, Epic further clarified, “We believe that what we tolerate is what we stand for, and as corporate citizens, we stand for the preservation of the foundation of the judicial system.”

To that end Epic will "try to work only with vendors that do not support WMC with its current management."

Good for Judith Faulkner, and good for Epic Systems.Epic management said that they could not support WMC's role in the Supreme Court race, which saw WMC pour approximately $1.8 million dollars into an ad campaign on behalf of Judge Michael Gableman.Whether that money was spent on behalf of Gableman or purely on egregiously deceitful attacks against Justice Butler is a close question.

WMC barely mentioned Gableman, likely because there was little to say on behalf of him to begin with, and especially while Gableman's own campaign descended to previously untrolled depths of patently false and disgraceful innuendo, a campaign Gableman actually claimed to have been proud of.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science hints darkly at illegal activity:Epic's threat not to work with another company based on an election campaign appears to be the first of its kind nationwide, said Howard Schweber.

"We should be uncomfortable when private businesses have enough power to coerce businesses or other organizations to change their political views or affiliations or keep them secret," Schweber said.Why? Epic Systems isn't colluding with its competitors to freeze out or favor a vendor. It's acting independently. Vendor selection and purchasing policy isn't limited to commercial considerations of price and delivery.

In fact Epic may only injure its own bottom line if avoiding WMC-affiliated suppliers results in higher priced or longer delivery items. A WMC spokesguy is defiant, or something, saying he won't be "intimidated." Bully for him.

Placing principle above lucre is nothing to be sneered at, especially in this case, where the principle at issue is central to the continuing success of the republic: the integrity of the courts.

In addition to the irony of the apparently unwitting reference to coercive corporate power — the abuse of which is Judith Faulkner's concern, not partisan politics — Prof. Schweber misses the point.

Epic's approach has nothing to do with partisan views or affiliations, it has to do with ethics, plain and simple. WMC waged a mendacious campaign of deliberate misinformation against a State Supreme Court Justice. Epic would prefer at the least not to mingle its lucre with that which is trading in sleaze.

Just as Epic can choose not to cut purchase orders to suppliers that engage in shady business practices so can it rebuff those connected to WMC's unseemly tactics. Selecting against WMC-affiliated suppliers is little different than purchasing only recycled toilet paper or only company bowling team shirts not manufactured in Bangladesh sweatshops.

It seems to me Epic's policy is laudable. Corporations may choose to express civic responsibility in a variety of ways, and this is one of them, based on a particularly admirable principle.

And WMC, having spent nearly $2 million on effectively attempted character assassination, certainly understands the coercive — and corrosive — power of lucre. If some WMC-affiliate suffers financially as a result of Epic's policy somehow, it will be a small price to pay for the sins committed earlier this year and beyond. Free market, the invisible hand and all that, coming back to slap you.

Prof. Schweber's discomfort would be far more accurately directed at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and not Epic Systems.

eta: Without providing a lick of evidence for either assertion and indeed in the face of evidence suggesting otherwise, Rick Esenberg describes Epic's statement as a "threat" and one of Epic's building contractors' withdrawal from WMC as a "submission" to that "threat."

But he does admit he only "imagines" it.

It's "not possible" to mention lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered humans as the object of prayers on church property, sez the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis.

Not possible? To simply say those words is "really inimical to the teachings of the Catholic church." Which themselves are really inimical to the teachings of Jesus, apparently.

On the other hand:Hundreds of dogs, many dressed as babies or clowns, were taken to celebrate mass in this Nicaraguan town on Sunday, an annual ritual where the owners pray for their pets to be cured or avoid falling ill.Dogs dressed as clowns entitled to entire Mass.

Eric Englund is his name

h/t the Recess Supervisor.

See also: Big Bad John Cornyn

Doin' the Lord's Work and enjoyin' a Good Brew.

The synth line in the intro has a suspiciously Middle Eastern quality.