MADISON The state election agency will not be required to aggressively comb through hundreds of thousands of recall signatures in search of fake names after all, following a ruling Friday by the state Court of Appeals.(author unknown)

Republican congressional candidate Ray Boland picked up one endorsement and one potential challenger for his party’s nomination this week.
(author unknown)

If it’s Friday, it’s another White House dump day. Cue the dump truck horn: Doot! Doot! Doot!

While Obama sycophants are busy trumpeting deceptive jobs numbers, the administration is quietly moving forward with job-killing Obamacare regs and taxes. The IRS today released rules to impose the $20 billion Obamacare medical device tax scheduled to take effect next year.

At a time when the White House is touting its government initiatives to champion “innovation,” the Obamacare innovation tax on medical device/diagnostic manufacturers will kill an estimated 43,000 jobs.

The very job creators President Obama purports to support are balking at the tax regs and have called for repeal. The Advanced Medical Technology Association, America’s leading association for med tech manufacturers, blasts the new rules:

“[The proposed IRS regulations] highlights the need for prompt action by Congress and the Administration to repeal this anti-competitive, job-killing tax,” Stephen J. Ubl, AdvaMed president and CEO said in a statement.

“Failure to repeal the device tax flies in the face of the President’s comments during the State of the Union about the need to reform our tax system to make our nation more competitive in the world market, a view shared by members of Congress from both parties,” Ubl went on to explain, adding that “the tax will create a number of complex administrative and technical burdens that must be addressed.”

I’ve reported before on how the medical device tax has already resulted in operational and job cutbacks in Massachusetts, home to many medical innovators.

Fewer jobs. Fewer entrepreneurs. Fewer medical advances.

Winning the future…by killing it.

Minnesota News
-- Republican legislators want to give Minnesotans the option to opt out of unions, a subject that has created heated debate in many states.  Talk about this topic(author unknown)

Minnesota News
-- Both Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former U.S. senator Rick Santorum will be campaigning in Minnesota this weekend while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made stops throughout the state yesterday as candidates visit the Gopher State with its precinct caucuses scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m.  Talk about this topic(author unknown)

Could slapping a new name or logo on city property be a potential moneymaker for La Crosse?
(author unknown)

Republicans pulled Minnesota into an explosive issue Thursday when Rep. Steve Drazkowski announced legislation that would make union membership optional, setting the stage for a fight that has in othe
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The 2012 Onalaska mayoral election is just getting under way, but candidate Samantha Carter has laid down the gauntlet with a “not business as usual” platform. Carter and challenger Joe Chilsen outlin
(author unknown)

A recent Holmen Village Board special meeting that ended in a brainstorming session brought out new ideas for meeting the town’s public building needs — ideas that suggested a new use for the village’
(author unknown)

Donald Trump on Thursday announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney for president, saying the former Massachusetts governor is not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country we all love.(author unknown)

(Click for full-size; Source: GOP Oversight)

Scroll for updates…

Forget Klownald Trump. This is your story of the day. Attorney General Eric Holder is on Capitol Hill day, facing another round of questions from relentless GOP watchdogs led by House Oversight and Govenrment Reform chair Darrell Issa.

You can watch the proceedings live on CSPAN online here.

The grilling comes as Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s family files suit against the lying ATF:

The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry charged Wednesday that the top federal prosecutor in Phoenix lied to them about the guns found at the crime scene in an attempt to hide the weapons’ connection to the ATF’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.

Terry was killed in December 2010, allegedly by Mexican bandits carrying at least two AK-47 semiautomatic rifles that had been purchased in Arizona as part of Fast and Furious. The operation was intended to catch drug lords using illegal weapons, but the ATF immediately lost track of 1,700 firearms.

The Terry family alleged that then-U.S. Atty. Dennis K. Burke told them last March that the two weapons came from a store in Texas and were not part of Fast and Furious.

The family made their allegations in a “notice of claim” stating that they intend to sue the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department for $25 million. They called the gun-tracking operation “abominable, reckless, nonsensical.”

Burke has resigned and has declined to discuss Fast and Furious. But the family’s claim notice strongly suggests that the federal government initially sought to keep Fast and Furious under wraps and hoped it would not be linked to the slaying.

House GOP leaders repeat what whistleblowers have been telling us from the start: Top White House/DOJ knew. They knew:

Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder’s scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, top lawmakers investigating the botched gunrunning operation, claims Justice Department officials in Washington and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the coordination in the early stages of the operation.
Related Interactive

Report released by Issa and Grassley on Fast and Furious

Republican lawmakers Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released a new report suggesting top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious.

Justice headquarters “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged,” the memo reads.

Rep. Issa’s preview statement in the advance of the hearing is here:

ate last year, after months of investigation, the Justice Department finally acknowledged the allegations were true. Fast and Furious was both reckless and flawed.

The Justice Department, however, has been less than forthcoming in cooperating with the efforts of Congressional investigators to determine exactly what happened and who was responsible:

• The Justice Department has delivered fewer than 8% of the 80,000 documents we know it has identified as being related to this flawed operation.

• It has refused to allow investigators access to numerous witnesses who participated in the operation – one witness, after being served with a subpoena, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination rather than answer questions.

• Justice Department now asserts that many documents pertaining to internal discussions and decision making about its response to Operation Fast and Furious are off-limits to investigators.

The American people deserve better from our nation’s top law enforcement agency. Thursday’s hearing will feature the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Eric Holder, who will be asked to explain his decision to withhold this factual evidence from investigators. What he is concerned this information would reveal? Why is the Department trying to keep its internal discussions about Operation Fast and Furious from after February 4, 2011 secret? Why did it take nearly nine months for the Justice Department to acknowledge its earlier denials were false? Why did senior Justice Department officials who knew about and received briefings on the operation fail to stop it? Should Americans have confidence in their chief law enforcement agency even though these same officials remain in their posts?

There is now broad bipartisan agreement that the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has exposed a serious and deadly failure of government. We know that the life of a brave Border Patrol agent has been lost along with countless Mexican citizens who have been victimized by guns from Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Holder has acknowledged that the danger created by Fast and Furious will continue for years.

This hearing is not about controversial struggles between gun control advocates and supporters of the Second Amendment. It is about the unifying, and what should be bipartisan, expectation that the Justice Department be held to a high standard and that those who failed to meet this standard should be held accountable. I look forward to Attorney General Holder’s testimony.

After Issa threatened contempt charges against the Department of Justice Obstructionists, DOJ responded with…more obstruction:

The Justice Department response Wednesday rejected Issa’s February 9, 2012, deadline to produce all demanded documents. Cole called the deadline “impossible” to meet because of the broad scope of the request.

He did not directly refer to the threat of a contempt charge by Issa.

…The hearing Thursday will not be the end of the battle over Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department’s inspector general continues to work on a detailed account of the origins of the operation, and who was involved. The report is not expected to be complete for at least a couple more months.

Holder has promised when it is completed, he is prepared to make individuals accountable. But Holder says he has no plan to seek resignations or administer discipline until that report is complete.

The corruption keeps piling up. Matthew Boyle has a hard-hitting investigative piece in the Daily Caller exposing yet another DOJ scandal involving alleged bribery of top officials involved in a financial fraud probe:

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

That source said that until the summer of 2011, the two compromised prosecutors were part of a team of more than 25 federal prosecutors pursuing a financial crime ring, and at least five other prosecutors tasked to the case were also compromised by the criminal suspects they were investigating, without being bribed.

Washington knew what it was getting when it confirmed corruptocrat Eric Holder. Innocent people have paid with their lives. Ignoring this man and his boss’s utter, systematic contempt for the rule of law has yielded deadly consequences.

America, let’s not make that mistake again.

***

Update:Go to my Twitter account for live-tweeting of the hearing.

Most jaw-dropping moment so far: Indignant Holder demanding he get “credit” for his work at DOJ.

Running joke: Every time gun-control Democrats call for more “tools.” There are plenty enough of them in charge in Washington.

Side note: Donald Trump stepping on this important hearing tells you everything you need to know about his purported interest in advancing conservative/GOP interests. Circus, circus.

Video clips:

GOP Rep. Issa’s opening statement:

GOP Rep. Patrick Henry underscores that there’s been no accountability for 13 months:

GOP Rep. Anne Marie Buerkle confronts Holder with Terry family’s plea for action. At the five-minute mark, you can’t hear it, but Democrats advised Holder: “Don’t answer:”

Jesus Christ is welcome at Brown County Board meetings, but some lawmakers say theyd feel more comfortable if he wasnt mentioned so specifically.(author unknown)

The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. But if policymakers are truly interested in harm reduction, they should pause to consider how many crimes are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns. A new paper from Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett uses a collection of news reports of self-defense with guns over an eight-year period to survey the circumstances and outcomes of defensive gun uses in America. The authors conclude that the vast majority of gun owners are ethical and competent, and tens of thousands of crimes are prevented each year by ordinary citizens with guns.

• "Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens," by Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett
• Defensive Gun Use: An Interactive Map

Cato Institute

Minnesota News
-- Opponents of requiring photo identifications for voters talked against it for hours Wednesday, knowing their chances of stopping the proposal were slim.  Talk about this topic(author unknown)

Holmen resident Bruce Evers is considering a run in the 3rd Congressional District.
(author unknown)

Democratic state Sen. Tim Cullen bowed out of the governors race today, saying he cant raise the money to compete with better-known opponents and he has no desire to participate in what he said was going to be a political war.(author unknown)

State Sen. Tim Cullen announced this afternoon that he is dropping out of the guv's race.

He said he cannot raise the $1 million to $2 million he believes is needed to deliver his message against other candidates with more resources and better name recognition.

Cullen's latest campaign finance report showed he had just $26,299 in the bank at the end of 2011 after raising just $157 over the six-month period.

Cullen has said in recent weeks that he would run on a mesage of rising above the partisanship that has gripped the Capitol over the past year. But he said today a bipartisan message would be "impossible" in "the most angry, partisan race in Wisconsin history."

-- By Staff

President Obama on Wednesday unveiled a plan to jump-start the flagging housing market by making it easier for homeowners to refinance their mortgages. Cato scholar Mark A. Calabria has argued that these proposals will do nothing to turn around either the housing market or the broader economy. "In fact," says Calabria, "by continuing his trend of confusing redistribution of wealth with its creation, the effort will likely hurt both the economy and the housing market."

• "Obama's Unwelcome Mat," by Mark Calabria
• Mark Calabria evaluates the state of the Union with respect to housing, Cato Video
• Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis, by Johan Norberg

Cato Institute

MADISON -- Despite privacy concerns raised by advocacy groups, the Government Accountability Board Tuesday posted post online electronic copies of some 1 million signatures from the recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker.(author unknown)

Barreling out of Florida with money and momentum on his side, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said Wednesday that the bare-knuckled nomination fight thus far has toughened him up for contests to come. Chief rival Newt Gingrich is regrouping after a significant loss and faces serious disadvantages in the next states to vote.(author unknown)