The Milwaukee Post

June 27, 2014 • Milwaukee County Post • 9 I'm alleging Mary Burke, during her years at Trek Bicycle, masterminded the blood doping and steroid abuse of Trek's endorsed superstar Lance Armstrong. I can't prove any of it. No judge said there's any truth to it. So what? I'll say it anyway. I'll lie about Mary Burke. This is Wisconsin after all. This is the state with a media led by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that will take a pack of unproven lies, thrown out of court by two judges, and plaster it all over page one anyway. All I'm doing is giv- ing Burke 1 percent of the Scott Walker treatment. They've been trying for five years to prove Walker is a crook. They've failed. So they're just going to say it anyway, knowing that a biased media will report the lies as if they are truth. In Wisconsin, truth isn't truth anymore. If you're a liberal prosecu- tor and a liberal media, the truth is what- ever you claim it is, no matter how dis- proven. Milwaukee's district attorney has been trying to nail Walker since he was Milwaukee County executive. He flopped the first time. So he tried again by invent- ing a nonexistent crime: illegal coordina- tion of campaigns with a third-party group. The sole basis for this trumped-up allega- tion is that a Walker political aide once worked for one of the outside groups, the Club For Growth. After raiding homes and seizing private property, all they could get was the judge presiding over the farce to declare that not only was no crime commit- ted, the "crime" being investigated is legal. Then a federal judge shut down the witch hunt, declaring (as the first judge did) that coordination of campaigns isn't a crime. Besides, he ruled, Walker and the other group weren't even doing it. In the America we've been taught about, with Lady Justice blindfolded while holding evenly weighted scales, that would have been the end of it. But this is Wisconsin in 2014. Instead, the prosecutors repeated the made-up allegation that was twice tossed out of court: Walker is at the center of a conspiracy. The media demanded the release of the records that contained the lie. The lie landed in the media's hands and thus one week's worth of headlines repeat- ing a bald-faced lie. The Journal Sentinel and the rest of the leftist media are repeating a disproven lie for the sole purpose of attempting to destroy an American citizen who is the elected governor of this state. Wisconsin is Salem and Scott Walker is the witch. This is the most indecent act of personal destruc- tion committed by a prosecutor and media one can imagine. They tried to stop Walker from being elected. They failed. They tried to stop him from enacting his agenda. They failed. They tried to recall him out of office. They failed. Now, knowing they were failing in their attempts to stop him from being re- elected on his record, they have invented a pack of lies and are reporting them as truth. Scott Walker busted up an unholy alliance of government unions and the Democrat Party. This is intolerable, accord- ing to the Wisconsin media-Democrat power structure. The events of the past week make clear they will stop at nothing to ruin him. Ugly as it is, this is the lay of our land. At least people like me know how to proceed in such a corrupt, amoral envi- ronment. (Mark Belling is the host of a daily WISN radio talk show. His column appears weekly in the Milwaukee Post.) MARK BELLING STANDING UP for MILWAUKEE OPINION Biased media printing lies about Walker Milwaukee Journal Sentinel leading this charge against Governor The latest twist in the ongoing John Doe investigation has revealed a lot about the prosecutors and the media in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, what it revealed was con- temptible. More than 260 pages of documents regarding the John Doe 2 investigation were released as part of a federal lawsuit last week. You might recall that the first John Doe investigation dragged on for years in a wide-ranging attempt to indict Gov. Scott Walker in both the courts and public opin- ion. It failed miserably in that regard. The prosecutors recreated their creature from the ashes of failure in the form of John Doe 2. It is clear from the released documents just what was on the prosecutors' minds. According to the prosecutors' filings, they accused Walker of being part of a "criminal scheme" to coordinate campaign activity with third-party groups during the recall election. This is presumably the thing that they also sought to prove during their first John Doe investigation to no avail. Despite the prosecutors' harsh language, they are wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. The state judge in the case, Gregory Peterson, threw out several subpoenas because the conduct that the prosecutors were trying to prove was not a crime. Without the subpoenas, the investigation was grinding to a halt. Meanwhile, one of the targets of the case, Eric O'Keefe, sued in federal court saying that the prosecutors were violating his First Amendment rights. The judge overseeing that case, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa, agreed so vigorously with O'Keefe that he ordered the investigation to be halted and all of the seized materials be returned to their owners. Again, the judge ruled that even if the prosecutors could prove what they alleged, it was not a crime. The prose- cutors are appealing Judge Randa's ruling, but the law is fairly clear. Despite the wish- es of the prosecutors, we do still have a right protected by the Constitution in this nation to advocate for our beliefs. What is plain to see is that despite being slapped down in two courts, the prosecutors are hellbent to spend as much time and money as possible to contin- ually harass Walker and his supporters for doing nothing more than engaging in issue advocacy. Why would the prosecutors be so adamant in their misguided adventure? The fact that the investigation is being headed up by Democratic District Attorney John Chisholm and Walker is a Republican is the obvious and likeliest explanation. Having failed to make their case in court, Chisholm and the other Democrats sailing on his prosecutorial Pequod have decided to try their case in the court of public opinion. It is a stunning display of partisan political gamesmanship from people who are sup- posed to uphold the law without bias. Another group of partisan Democrats also decided to use the document dump from John Doe 2 to beclown themselves. Much of the mainstream media jumped on the docu- ments with an energy that would power the state indefinitely. Many of the stories were emblazoned with misleading headlines like "Prosecutors accuse Governor Walker of heading a 'crim- inal scheme'" and pundits on television blathered on in ignorance as if the allega- tions were new or part of an active investi- gation. The truth is that the investigation is all but dead. The allegations by the prosecutors were made a long time ago as part of that misguided prosecution and two judges have said that the prosecutors are running up the wrong tree. In other words, the allegations are part of the losing side of an argument and yet the media portrayed it as if they had merit. They do not. But a news consumer had to read very deep into most reports to discover that. Once again we must ask why the media would misrepresent the story so badly. Unfortunately, there are only three plau- sible answers. It was too lazy to learn and report the story accurately. They were too stupid to understand the legal proceedings and their implications. Or they are partisan Democrats who allowed their burning hatred for Walker to melt any semblance of professionalism. I suspect that the reason varied among the newsrooms and news peo- ple, but it is not flattering for any of them. The willingness of the partisan prosecu- tors and press to hype the prosecutors' dis- credited accusations does tell us one thing. The Democrats are afraid to run against Walker on the issues important to this state. Given Walker's stellar record in three short years in office, they are right to be afraid. (Owen Robinson is a West Bend resident. His column runs regularly in The Post.) Don't believe in the hype Media sensationalizing aside, John Doe 2 all but dead Robinson "Having failed to make their case in court, Chisholm and the other Democrats sailing on his prosecutorial Pequod have decided to try their case in the court of public opinion. It is a stunning display of parti- san political gamesman- ship from people who are supposed to uphold the law without bias." – Robinson

• Cover