The early-🎀morning paramilitary-style raids on citizens’ homes were conducted by law-enforcement officers, sometimes wear😼ing bulletproof vests and lugging battering rams, pounding on doors and issuing threats.
The police 🌊seized computers, including those of children still in pajamas. Clothes drawers, including the children’s, were ransacked, cellphones confiscated and the citizens told it would be a crime to tell anyone of the raids.
Some raids were precursors of, others were parts of, the nastiest episode of this unlove🐷ly political season.
This attempted criminalization of politics in order to silence pers🔯ons occupying just one portion of the political spectrum has happened in Wisconsin, which often has conducted robust political arguments with Midwestern civility.
Wisconsin has long been fertile soil for conviction politics. Now, however, Wisconsin has been embar🐼rassed by Milwaukee County’s Democratic district attorney, John Chisholm.
Hඣe has used Wisconsin’s uniquely odious “John Doe” process to launch sweepiಌng and virtually unsupervised investigations while imposing gag orders to prevent investigated persons from defending themselves or rebutting politically motivated leaks.
According to s💟everal published reports, Chisholm told members of his staff subordinates that his wife, a teachers-union shop steward at her school, is anguished by her detestation of Walker’s restrictions on government employees unions, so Chisholm considers it his duty to help defeat Walker.
Chisholm has misinterpreted Wisconsin 🎀campaign law in a way that looks willful. He has done so to justify꧅ a “John Doe” process that has searched for evidence of “coordination” between Walker’s campaign and conservative issue advocacy groups.
On Oct. 14, much too late in the campaign season to rescue the rights of conservative groups, a federal judge affirmed what Chisholm surely has known all along: Since a Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago, the only coordination that is forbidden is betwee🐠n candidates and independent groups that go beyond issue advocacy to “express advocacy” — explicitly advocating the election or defeat of a particular candidate.
But Chisholm’♔s aim — to have a chilling effect on conservative ꦚspeech — has been achieved by bombarding Walker supporters with raids and subpoenas: Instead of raising funds to disseminate their political speech, conservatives, harassed and intimidated, have gone into a defensive crouch.
Instead of raising funds to disseminate their political speech, conservatives, harassed and intimidated, have gone into a defensive crouꦗch.
Liberal groups haven’t been targeted for their activit🎐ies t🅠hat are indistinguishable from those of their conservative counterparts.
Such misbehavior takes a toll on something that already is in s๊hort supply — belief in government’s legitimacy.
Gangster government has stained Wis💟consin, illustrating this truth: The regulation of campaigns in the name of political hygiene (combating “corruption” or the “appearance” of it) inevitably involves bad laws and bad bureaucracies susceptible to abuse by bad people.
No known evidence demonstrates any complicity i𝓡n Chisholm’s scheme, but in a smarmy new ad Democrat Mary Burke exploits his manufactu𒀰red atmosphere of synthetic scandal in a manner best described as McCarthyite.
Wisconsin can repair its reputation by dismantling the “John Doe” process and disciplinꦚing those who’ve abused it. About one of them, this can be said: Having achieved political suppression by threatening criminal liability based on vague theories of “coordination,” Chisholm has inadvertently but powerfully made the case for deregulating politics.