It's bad enough that the dispatcher who received Brittany Zimmermann's call for help soon before her untimely death last month has NOT been disciplined (her name isn't available for public consumption either, although she's a public employee).

Bad enough. But in today's Wisconsin State Journal, reporters Matthew DeFour and Patricia Simms crack open the story further in contribution to Isthmus journalist Jason Shepard's prize-worthy reporting about developments in Zimmermann's last moments of life.

The WSJ crew detail the sheer incompetence of Dane County's 911 Call Center Director Joe Norwick.

How does this guy - Joe Norwick - have a job come Mon., May 5, 2008?

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP), in conjunction with Rainbow Bookstore (Madison), sends books, free of charge, to prisoners in Wisconsin and other states who request them.

Many prisons have antiquated, non-accessible, and, in some cases, non-existent library facilities. As a result, prisoners have little or no reading or educational material. WBTP tries to address this problem.

WBTP currently gets about 30 requests a week and each package of 2-3 books costs on average about $3 to mail. During the past year, postage costs alone exceeded $3,000, and that's expected to double by the end of 2008.

The project is facing a financial crisis and must raise funds for postage immediately; it has temporarily suspended sending books to out-of-state prisoners until it raises money for postage.

Can you help? Checks can be made out to and mailed to: “Wisconsin Books to Prisoners”, 1019 Williamson St. #B, Madison, WI 53703.

Books are also needed, fiction and non-fiction, soft covers preferred. More info here.

Current Drop Off Sites for Donated Books:

Fair Ground Coffeehouse, 5901 W. Vliet St., Milwaukee WI 53208

Okay - I know that a lot of you are coming in here and reading Uppity Wisconsin these days. And that's great, it really is.

But it's a little disheartening that we have such a small core of people contributing. And when I say contributing, I mean in any way.

We really could use some help building the database of web links here on the site - just click on submit link at the top of the page, and put in a link.

Or even something as small as voting on a poll - We put up questions occasionally, either on a political issue, or on some question regarding the site (like the current poll). Could some of you vote on these things, or do you just not care about what direction things go here?

A few of us have been kicking around the idea of having a meeting for progressive bloggers and webmasters later in the year. It struck me that one good possibility might be to do this in conjunction with Fighting Bob Fest - but I'm very open to suggestions. Ideas ? Either comment here or drop me a line through the contact button at the top of the site.

I thought I would forward over this action alert from the folks at Fair Wisconsin:

Today Governor Jim Doyle will release his budget proposal to the Wisconsin Legislature. For the first time, he will call on state lawmakers to extend domestic partner health insurance to all state employees.

Please urge your state lawmakers to support domestic partner benefits today. Click here to send a message:

http://eqfed.org/campaign/DPB