To get the transcript of the Grand Jury, a request in writing must be made to the court. It will be worth the read.

Honorable Rudulph Randa
517 E Wisconsin Ave
Chamber 310
Milwaukee, WI 53202

Case Number: 06CR20

Yeah, but the word is that Democratic assistant attorneys or other legal operatives helped this along and were instrumental in bringing charges against Thompson. Who were these people and why did they go along?

Prosecutors push these high-profile public corruption and white collar cases to get better jobs in the private sector.

an innocent question for someone to help me understand. Could someone in a similar situation bring a slander/libel suit?

It doesn't seem very different than having your life evicerated by a mean-mouthed media blow hard.

How about some follow-up on this question by shrubsy?

I would be very interested to hear what the state attorney general and dane county official have to say about biskupic's claim: that he went forward with the case with THEIR blessings.

>Gonzales must have claimed at least a half-dozen times that Biskupic consulted with the Democratic DA and Democratic Attorney General about this case<.

being "consulted" and agreeing that it should be prosecuted are two different things.

My wife "consults" me on most household decisions, and then does what she wants, whatever I think about it.

Scale, as in the scales of justice have been stolen.

The problem I have with this opinion is the statement that it's actually possible for prosecutors to believe that there's been a crime committed in a case like this.

Or perhaps there's just no "reasonable person" standard for being a prosecutor.

But I still do not understand how, if it was so ridiculous, he convinced a jury to convict her. Were they very dumb? Did she have a very bad defense?

Biskupic says that he brought the charge in *consultation* with the state AG and county DA. He doesn't say whether they counseled him to proceed or refrain.

Yeah, there might be shenanigans here, but I'd want to see something more than Biskupic's say-so that he talked with them without saying what answers they gave him.

Since folks are asking...

Letter to the editor from former Assistant Attorney General (and onetine AUSA for the Western District)Dan Bach

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/index.php?ntid=129178&ntpid=2
"Daniel Bach: Evidence, not politics, spurred Thompson prosecution"

No one yet has answered why the Democratic Dane County Attorney and the Democratic Wisconsin State Attorney General, who Biskupic wants to share the blame with, didn't file charges themselves. Or was the case too weak for them?

How on earth does "possible for prosecutors to believe, and public employees to deny, that a crime has occurred, and for both sides to act in good faith...." become "any reasonable person would have looked at this case and seen that nothing amiss had occurred," which then leads you to "question the prosecutor's judgment"?

It looks like the court opinion is stating explicitly that people acting in good faith can have different opinions about whether or not a crime has been committed, which is due to the law being too vague to be applied objectively.

The court certainly doesn't seem to be saying, in the excerpt you quote to make your point, that the prosecution was malicious.

Ditto on all you folks who want to know about the who-knew-what-and-when-did-they-know-it about those consultations with the state dems. The paucity of detail in Biskupic's statement makes me very suspicious that we are witnessing just more sand-in-the-face Republicanism.

Do we know yet why Biskupic in the Eastern District brought the case, rather than the USA in the Western District that contains Madison?

It seems to me that JTL has an excellent point, above: if you are the Democratic attorney general, and a US attorney "consults" with you about their intention to indite someone working in the office of a Democratic governor, you can't go too far towards dissuading the US attorney without inviting accusations that you are impeding a corruption prosecution for partisan political reasons.

A better question, for those who were in Wisconsin at the time, is who spoke out against the prosecution and conviction as it happened? While the attorney general can't be seen to block a prosecution, there's nothing stopping them from deriding it in epxressions of their personal opinion, especially after the verdict is in.

The real irony here is that, based on Biskupic's theory, as a result of the reversal, he could be prosecuted under the same statutes he cited for depriving the government of his "Honest Services" in bringing a bogus case against Thompson. Now that's a real Catch-22!

Yo, r€nato, et. Al, it's not so much annoying as it is lame. ;-)

Where is the private bill to compensate Thompson? When will Biskupic be fired for "performance related reasons."

In a State which had long prided itself on an image of clean government, the relatively recent convictions of the Dem. Senate majority leader and Rep. Assembly Speaker, combined with the Governor's agressive fundraising had created a climate in which everyone (disclaimer: yours truly included) had been pre-disposed to draw a link between the Adelman Travel contribution and the awarding of the contract once the losing bidder cried foul.

This does not mean there was necessarily no political presure on Biskupic, but would explain the Grand Jury giving him an indictment to see what might develop.

"The laws, they wrote, make it "possible for prosecutors to believe, and public employees to deny, that a crime has occurred, and for both sides to act in good faith...."

In other words, the judges are saying that any reasonable person would have looked at this case and seen that nothing amiss had occurred -- but it was nevertheless legally possible to bring a prosecution. For that, you could blame the law... but you could also question the prosecutor's judgment."

I'm with JP on this one: that's not what the judges are saying at all (at least not in this excerpt). On the contrary, they're saying that reasonable people could look at this and completely disagree as to whether a crime had occurred. Which is why they suggest that statutes shouldn't be written this way.

By the way, that does not mean that Thompson's prosecution and conviction was not politically driven; it just means that the statute was so poorly drafted that it allowed for that outcome, as well as for a prosecution and conviction done in good faith.

It should be an obvious violation of the Rico Act. Punishing people by abusing the Judicial system.

After reading the opinion, it seems to me that the court came to the conclusion that it's not a crime to make decisions based upon political considerations.

Am I the only one who reads this opinion as being a two edged sword?

Fiddler: "So what about the poor woman whose life was turned inside out: can she sue?"

No, she can't. But she has her job back with back pay, and the state is paying her legal costs.

Randy R: "It's also interesting to note that one of the jury members seems to have tampered with by the prosecution. As I recall during deliberations one member of the jury brought forth info that was not presented in the evidence or was made in the press. It would appear that someone in Biskupic's office was feeding information into the jury room."

So she would have been entitled to a new trial in any case (even if the outside info didn't come from Biskupic's office).

Now that I've given the decision a quick read, I'm tempted to think that the judges went out of their way to avoid giving outsiders ammunition for a charge that the prosecution was politically motivated. Despite several pages of analysis and citations essentially establishing that no one had ever been convicted under these statutes under even remotely similar circumstances, and still more pages of analysis and hypotheticals indicating that well established canons of statutory construction militated against any such prosecution, the court then takes a sudden turn to complain about how vague the statute is, as if that vagueness were (by itself) to blame for the prosecution.
Yet the court's own analysis shows the opposite: similar prosecutions have not occurred, nor -- given these precedents and canons of construction -- should they.
Indeed, the very canon of construction they rely upon -- the Rule of Lenity -- essentially states that if there are two different interpretations of a statute, under one of which an act is a crime, and under the other of which it's not, the statute should be interpreted against criminalizing the conduct. In other words, this prosecution should never have occurred: the fact that it was possible to interpret the statute the way the prosecution did does NOT mean that it was correct (or acceptable) for it to have done so. On the contrary, a prosecution under such circumstances (no supporting precedent, canons of construction pointing the other way, and clearly unacceptable consequences if the prosecution's theory is applied to other routine events) is an abuse of that prosecutor's discretion, plain and simple.
The likely explanation for the court's failure to draw the conclusion that its own analysis so clearly called for is that the court (like all courts) did not want to be drawn into a political dispute. So they crafted the decision so that any lawyer reading it would clearly get the message (i.e., that this prosecution should never have taken place), but there would be no passage in the decision that the media/politicians could quote as saying so in so many words.
Judges have a way of doing things like that -

The facts recounted in the Courts' opinion are unsavory. Georgia Thompson did subvert the procurement process established by the Wisconsin legislature, and the prosecution presented evidence that she did this for political reasons. I am persuaded by the opinion that Ms. Thompson's actions did not merit conviction, but I don't believe we should be comfortable with what she did either. Even if a procurement process is flawed, civil servants should not subvert it for political reasons.

So I think that this case is closer than most in the liberal blogosphere have characterized it as being. I am inclined to believe that Steven Biskupic pursued the prosecution in good faith.

For me, this conclusion serves only to highlight the grave problem that the Bush Administration has created with its politicization of the Justice Department. If Biskupic were corrupt, then the problem would lie with him. If we conclude that Biskupic acted in good faith, however, then the problem lies with the system.

Prosecutorial discretion is crucial to the justice system. The statues involved here are hardly the only ones that make it "possible for prosecutors to believe, and [defendants] to deny, that a crime has occurred, and for both sides to act in good faith...." Consequently, the prosecutor needs to be able to separate action morally worthy of criminal indictment from those only technically sufficient for criminal indictment.

Even the best intentioned individual cannot truly know all factors that affect a difficult discretionary decision. Existing in a culture that rewards "loyal Bushies" must influence the outlook and thought processes brought to discretionary decisions in ways that the decider likely never realizes.

In summary, I fear that the Bush Administration has created a Justice Department in which even well intentioned civil servants will find their decisions compromised by partisan politics.

Could this case be an "inoculation" against prosecuting, say, Abu Gonzales, or Sampson, or Goodling?

If this case is "preposterous" because political considerations can be a small matter, and merely a minor administrative violation, can't they just hold this case up and say "Look! Here you're cheering, but in the case of the AG, you're partisan hypocrites!"

Just wondering. It looks like too stupid a move to belong to Rove.

"The facts recounted in the Courts' opinion are unsavory. Georgia Thompson did subvert the procurement process established by the Wisconsin legislature, and the prosecution presented evidence that she did this for political reasons. . . So I think that this case is closer than most in the liberal blogosphere have characterized it as being. I am inclined to believe that Steven Biskupic pursued the prosecution in good faith."
I have to disagree with you pretty strongly here, on both the facts and the law. As for the facts, unfortunately the PDF of the decision doesn't allow block and copy, and it's too long a story to recite every detail here, but I invite the open-minded to read for themselves and judge. The simplified version is that two competing bidders were largely equal in overall ratings; one was in-state and had a lower price, the other scored higher on other factors. Thompson argued for the in-state one because it would be preferred by her boss for "political" reasons, although, as the court notes, those "political" reasons could have been perfectly innocent (awarding it to an in-state vendor might be more popular, or awarding it to the lower bidder might be more popular), or might have been "corrupt" (i.e., she received a $1,000 raise three months later). On a play-off between the two, it was a statistical dead heat (102.7 vs. 103.3); she rounded both off to 103, and gave the contract to the in-state bidder. Hardly a blatant "subversion" of the procurement process, and the court's decision pretty much says so.
As for the law, I'd refer you to my earlier post: the combination of no supporting precedent, unworkable practical consequences, and a violation of well-established canons of statutory construction pretty much translates to a bogus prosecution that should never have been brought. I would particularly stress that part of the court's decision where it notes that under the prosecution's interpretation of the statute, any court that later got reversed could be deemed to have committed a crime. That's the court's way of saying this interpretation was untenable.

So many questions have been asked in this comment thread about the WI AG and the Dane Co. Prosecutor. Just a few quick notes to add a little dimention:

1) Dane Co. Prosecutor was just coming off the biggest public corruption prosecution in Wisconsin history. His staff either got pleas or convictions from a HUGE number of our Assembly and Senate leaders plus their staff.

2) The WI AG (who I will state is a good friend of mine) had a really, really bad year. This is not to mitigate anything - quick run down - a DUI conviction in a state vehicle, a scandal of said use of that vehicle, a diagnosis of breast cancer, and a a brutal primary loss to a candidate of the Governor's inner circle.

3) the former WI AG also was the USA for the Western District of WI for 8 years under Bill Clinton.

4) the former WI AG also beat Steven Biskupic's brother for the AG position. This Biskupic brother subsequently was embroiled in a bribery scandal and ethics investigation that brought down his former D.A. boss.

I doubt whether Blanchard or Lautenschlager will ever comment on this case.

"Biskupic says that he brought the charge in *consultation* with the state AG and county DA."

so we can assume that "Biskupic" can REMEMBER SOME FUCKING DETAILS OF WHAT HE DID

or are we gonna see another sorry assed repuglican lawyer tell us the "HE DOESN'T RECALL THINKING THAT" ???

hey, "Biskupic, if you think you're gonna develope another sorry assed case of amnesia, please let us know now

The voter-fraud campaign being run out of the US attorney's office in
Milwaukee is far more than a misplaced priority.
Not only is the Republican's premise of an organized campaign of
voter fraud completely bogus, it is a mask for a real campaign of
voter fraud being run out of the White House.
What makes it so difficult to see is that it is-or was-hiding in
plain sight.
What happened in Wisconsin, with the full cooperation of cowed
Democrats like
Lautenschlager, Blanchard and Doyle, led not only to the railroading
of Georgia Thompson on little more than lies, it also led to the
truly cruel persecution and jailing of everyday folks like Kimberly
Prude of Milwaukee.
And all of this was sanctioned by a federal grand jury, the US
attorney in Milwaukee,
Judge Randa, a jury of peers, in fact every legal step in Wisconsin
approved of this cruelty, including ALL the established media. The
Wisconsin State Journal, the Capital Times, The Milwaukee
JournalSentinel; not one of them demanded a halt to the inquisitions
before the star chamber in Milwaukee, passed off as a bipartisan
investigatory tool, or grand jury.
And the broad 'investigation' into political corruption continues. Do
you suppose that this charade will have the nerve to present its
'findings' before the same discredited grand jury that indicted
Georgia Thompson?
Will the State Journal and all other media again twiddle their thumbs
on the sidelines while more hardened 'voters while black' and vicious
'questionable' campaign donors are publicly vilified?
Will ANYBODY bother to demand an end to the ongoing investigations
and the grand jury in Milwaukee?
Knowing what we now know about the White House political agenda
forced on the Attorney General, the Department of Justice and all
93 federal prosecutors throughout the country, it should be clear
that every investigation, indictment, case, prosecution, conviction
and jailing-every one of them-is tainted. And victims of these
tainted proceedings are fully justified in suing their defense
attorneys if they don't immediately sue to roll back this wave of
Bush/Rove/Republican criminality that has engulfed us all.
Where to start?
How about here? In Madison.
Disband the grand jury.
Halt the still ongoing investigation out of the US attorney's office.
Reveal the transcript of the Georgia Thompson grand jury. Anybody can
request a copy of this document-call the clerk of courts for details
( (414) 297-3372).
Shed some light on the role of the secret Federalist Society in all
this.
This is one of those times when angry citizens can recover some of
the rights and freedoms they so willingly gave up in the mistaken
belief that their security demanded it.
As we now know, we got took.

phil ball
428 north main st., philville
fort atkinson, wi
53538

920-397-724
pball9258@charter.net

If it were me, (which it isn't) I'd be trying to get Chiara; in this scathing letter to her boss she asks him to help her get a new job, while suggesting that the reasons why were discussed in previous EMAIL. Curious & familiar.

Perhaps she's ready to withdraw from the "informal witness protection program" (an equivication that so perverts justice that it is disgusting.) I wonder if she used that term because it was used on her when they asked her to resign?

It is a good short read:
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/03/20/chiara.pdf

Phil: ditto! Then Ohio & Florida, at least!

Wisconsin Sees Its Reflection In The Georgia Thompson Case: Guest Post

My longtime friend and former Madison Mayoral staff colleague Phil Ball offers a commentary on the implications of the Georgia Thompson case: 

What galls is the injustice of it. Take a close look. 

The process itself led to the near-destruction of Georgia Thompson. She was a victim of supposedly seamless legal procedures and safeguards, the pride of American jurisprudence - - and also victimized by a falsified political debate and failed free press. 

True, the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, a part of the system, made short shrift of all the nonsense that came before it, ordering Thompson freed with a single majestic assertion of street clarity; 'Bullshit!' 

But here in Wisconsin, all the instruments agreed that she was guilty, beginning with 'independent' federal prosecutors, citizen grand juries, free and objective media, open trial before a jury of peers, public debate of the facts - - all of it overseen by a competent judiciary and duly reported and commented on a near daily basis. 

The result; an honorable, innocent life nearly destroyed. 

Compounding this travesty was the follow-on.

From the Governor on down, public figures and the usual opportunists condemned graft and corruption in general and Georgia Thompson in particular by name and by implication. Liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican - - it made no difference, before or after the fact of conviction: Georgia Thompson was stoned in the stocks on the public square.

How could this happen? 

With formal safeguards exhausted or complicit in the crime, all that remained between Georgia Thompson and gross injustice was the hope for the voice of a righteous individual saying, "No. This is wrong. The judge, jury, prosecutors, grand jurors, newspapers, they are all wrong. The people are wrong." 

But public leaders who knew better nonetheless censored themselves, at best. At worst, they joined the pack of jackals that perpetrated this shameful act in condemning Georgia Thompson.

Was the prosecution of Georgia Thompson orchestrated by Republicans as part of the Bush strategy nationally to politicize the whole system of federal prosecutors, and in Wisconsin, to embarrass Democrats and Gov. Jim Doyle in particular?

Could this have happened if Doyle and others who clearly knew that this was a sham prosecution had stood up at the start and said, "This is political abuse of an innocent public servant and I won't allow it. I will fight for Georgia Thompson's rights."?

I like Jim Doyle. Always have. But there are times when he is cautious to a flaw. In this instance, it cost Georgia Thompson dearly. 

For the rest of us who stood by and watched - - well, it doesn't make you proud to be a Badger, does it?

posted by Phil Ball in Jim Rowen's blog, April 8, 2007, at 
thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com

If YOU wanna monkey-wrench these mother fuckers, here's how you do it. The same judge who presided over this travesty in Wisconsin, Judge Rudolph Randa, a proud Federalist socialite, is also the grantor of access to the TRANSCRIPT of the Grand Jury that indicted Georgia Thompson.
You are going to request your copy of this transcript by
calling the federal clerk of courts at (414) 297-3372 and
asking for instructions.

Or write to:
Judge Rudolph Randa
517 E Wisconsin Ave
Chamber 310
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Case Number: 06CR20

Enclose a written request for the transcript of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment of Georgia Thompson.
Give the case number(see above), sign it and send it.

And remember, as the 7th Circuit CA stated so clearly,
the fraudulent application of the law was followed by a fraudulent conviction.
Post hoax ergo propter hoax.

So saddle up mis amigas y amigos.
Rodemos!

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

> Biskupic has asserted repeatedly that he pursued the prosecution in conjunction with [Democratic State Attorney General] Lautenschlager and [nonpartisan Dane County District Attorney] Blanchard.

> In recent interviews, Blanchard, Lautenschlager and her top deputy, Dan Bach, said they participated in meetings in which the investigation of Thompson was discussed. But the final decision to charge Thompson was made by Biskupic, they said.

Dear r€nato --

Yes, considering all that has happened in just the last week, it does seem that those who find the posting of "codes" offensive could put the matter in perspective and simply live and let live. For everyone who objects to comments on the code I suspect that there is at least one person who objects to comments on the comments. Surely there is more to be concerned about.

Shorter Easterbrook: the US did not prove "scienter" which is an element of the crime. Unfortunately, Easterbrook, who is a legend in his own mind, never says this in the opinion. I think this is on purpose. It is a terribly written opinion. Fourteen pages to write what could have been said in four?

Easterbrook is part of the Federalist brotherhood. Two other members of the panel are not. What else do you need to know?

The Dem. AG, Peg Lautenschlager, lost the Dem primary to a candidate backed by
Gov Doyle, due to a DUI and misuse of state property controversy. She was somewhat embittered,
and did attend meetings of the USA's corruption probe along with the Dane County DA Blanchard;
the truth is that although many Dems knew the probe was politicized fromt the getgo, they were cowed by their own fear that indeed there might be some corruption. So they said 'of course we'll cooperate'/
Their mistake, due wholly to gutlessness and political opportinism, was in allowing baseless charges to be pursued after the USA was able to obtain an indictment from his GJ. When that happened, the Dems, and all msm in wisconsin, joined the hunt.
Lautenschlager and Blanchard had their own agendas, the usual trivial local political thing. And neither had anything to do with the decision to prosecute. Fact is, they were little more than windowdressing.
But their signifigance in all of this sad story was inderlined when Gonzo essentially fingered them as complicitous and culpable in the lynching of Georgia Thompson and a score of innocents in Milwaukee on beyond trivial voter-fraud charges.

I'm not quite sure which .pdf some of the commenters here have read. I found no recitation of facts that seriously questioned Ms. Thompson's actions.

The appellate court used exquisitely bland academic descriptions of Ms. Thompson's actions, and the relevant WI and federal statutes. Even when viewing the facts from a perspective most favorable to the government, it found no facts to support a finding that Ms. Thompson broke any federal or state laws.

The WI purchasing rules explicit incorporate objective and subjective factors. The objective facts put Adelman at or near the top. In the run-off, which was legitimately called, Adelman came within ten thousandths of a point of the "leader's" score, what many people, including professional purchasing agents, would call a draw.

Ms. Thompson had a preference for an in-state supplier rather than an out-of-state one. WI would have received fair value from either vendor and Ms. Thompson recommended one over the other. A routine act of purchasing replicated thousands of times a day.

What was galling was the federal prosecutors attempt to federalize and criminalize this behavior.

The prosecutor also alleged, in an effort to show that Ms. Thompson personally gained from this decision, that a routine annual raise equivalent to about 1.5%, determined by an independent review board, was paid in part as a "reward" for improperly "steering" this contract to Adelman. The prosecutor apparently came to this peculiar reading without looking at any other items related to Ms. Thompson's performance for the preceding year.

Collectively, the federal prosecutor's arguments would lead to the litigation of thousands of cases at great expense, where the states involved had suffered no loss. An absurd result, which the appellate court immediately recognized, causing it to order Thompson's immediate release.

This is the most DISHONEST recounting of an appellate court decision I have ever read.

The Court took the prosecutor off the hook as to any question of good faith, and laid the blame squarely at the feet of Congress for the language of the statutes, and in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court which makes the line between corrupt practices by state employees and merely good politics by those same employees sometimes impossible to find.

More later.

JS Online has an audio of the oral arguments from Thompson's appeal. It's only 30 minutes long but worth a listen, partuclarly the second half where the judges reduce the Assistant USA to a stuttering mess.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=587339

From page 3 of the Court's opinion: "Thompson tried to engage in logrolling, offering to change her scores for bidders on other travel contracts if members of the working group would change their scores on this contract." Opinion, p. 3.

That's unsavory. The Court seems to excuse Thompson's subversion of the procurement process because the process is so idiotic and because Thompson may have had the best interest of Wisconsin at heart (and I agree with the Court on those points). I also agree that Thompson should not have been prosecuted. Nonetheless, as a civil servant Thompson should faithfully uphold the process created by the legislature, even if it is idiotic.

MAL, in Madison: I've been told that Biscupic is not a member of the Federalist Society, however many members of his staff are as is the Chief Justice Randa. Its an open question as to whether or not membership is a hiring criterion, as it seems to have been in Gonzo's shop where it appeared on a subponeaed list of USAs along with their ratings.
Wouldn't you think that some enterprising journalist would follow this thread, bring a little clarity to the matter?
Phil Ball

Correction: The appellate court entered an order of acquital and not a mere reversal.

What was unsavory was not the recitation of the facts, or the court's viewing them in a light most favorable to the govt, but that it went so far out of its way to imply that it was possible to infer criminal wrongdoing from everyday acts and laws not nearly as vague as the court suggested, even while concluding that it was grossly unjust to do so in the case of Ms. Thompson.

I think that's called a Solomonic slicing of the baby, correctly acquiting Ms. Thompson of wrongdoing while trying to protect the prosecutor from claims of unethical conduct. A careful maneuver that takes considerable intent and dexterity. Sadly, in this case, I think that does more harm while trying to do good: it frees Ms. Thompson from further unjust punishment and blame, but protects the prosecutor and political party that intentionally caused it.

I hope this in OT here.
Just read an article posted at the Atlantic Free Press about an African-American preacher from western Michigan, Rev.Pinkney, who was convicted of voter fraud for paying someone $5.00 to recruit people to pass out leaflets. He is currently under house arrest and is facing up to 20 years in prison.
Is this another wrongful conviction?

They Got The Wrong Guy
by Jayne Lyn Stahl
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1423/81/

re tying this stuff to the White House/Rove:
was the local right wing talk radio talent helping fry Georgia Thompson and is there a pattern?

one thing many of these fired prosecutor cases have in common is that the 'evaluations/excuses' used to fire them are related to exaggerated or unsubstantiated cases of dem corruption and rumors of dems/illegal aliens stealing votes.

so, if the local right wing blowhards were part of the get Thompson campaign were they merely reacting to what they saw in the morning papers like everyone else, or were they getting the latest news on the phone or emails from GOP operatives?

talk radio is rove's best propaganda tool- the dittoheads are Bush's biggest single homogenous base element. no other medium allows the same level of unchallenged repetition. the local and national radio blowhards may have been reacting independently on these issues but they really don't do much of their own research. that's part of beauty of being a high paid GOP radio loudmouth (just like being a modern GOP representative)- they just have to memorize the talking points- they get regular emails and faxes from various GOP sources and it would be naive not to assume those sources are not centralized somehow and that rove isn't at least watching it. more likely it was part of their general election/PR campaign.

in NM the local right wing talkers at 770KKOB went nuts on these issues before the elections to help heather wilson over patricia madrid (like they did Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos -tying richardson, gore, clinton to the chi-coms). there was real corruption there (NM), and has been, but they used talk radio to help pressure iglesias, either generally or through their devoted dittoheads pressuring Domenici, to help them use it for the election. unfortunately for Domenici and Bush/Rove, it might have bit them back.

it may be useful in investigating the prosecutor mess, and trying to find ties to the White House, for Dem investigators to tie it to the general GOP PR campaign and specifically to Rove's vastly underestimated ground troops- talk radio.

Prosecutorial Misconduct - that and greed are huge threats to liberty .

Steve Biskupic's correct title is the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin not the U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee