Poison tree that now has poison fruit

Mary Spicuzza, Wisconsin State Journal:

It’s illegal to direct company funds to political campaigns in the state [Wisconsin].

But William Gardner, the president and CEO of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co., told the state last May that he gave company money to reimburse employees for making political donations to Gov. Scott Walker and other political candidates.

Gardner was charged Monday morning with two felony counts of violating campaign finance laws, including charges of excessive political contributions and unlawful political contributions.
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The investigation was triggered by after Gardner’s “former woman friend” said he had asked her to make a campaign contribution using his money, according to the criminal complaint.

Interestingly, Gardner was not initially quite so forthright about admitting his legal culpability as the State Journal article makes it seem. Wisconsin Citizen Action:

According to the complaint, she [former mistress] contacted the GAB [Government Accountability Board] in an attempt to force Gardner to return her personal property. She wrote in an e-mail that she had not disclosed Gardner’s name to the GAB but would do so if she did not receive “all of my belongings, and I mean everything belonging to me” by April 30.

Gardner responded in an e-mail, “Knock yourself out. I did nothing wrong and have broken no law.”

None of the articles make clear whether Gardner is married. I think it’s relevant to know whether he was cheating on a wife while he was cheating on the law, but YMMV. What is not under debate is that Scott Walker benefited from contributions from an admitted felon.

Lunatic fringe

The Pentagon has now officially joined the lunatic fringe, claiming that the UN Rapporteur on Torture and a US Congressman would not be conducting official business in visiting veteran Bradley Manning in prison. The effect would be to prevent Manning from discussing his situation freely, since the conversations would be monitored and could be used against him in court.

Thank you, Firedoglake for bringing out this clear abuse of power. None of us has any excuse for averting our eyes from a plainly illegal action.

But wait! The State Department is trying to keep up in the race toward complete and abject lunacy by blaming anti-coup demonstrators for violence in Honduras, with spokesman Jeremy Spector actually saying: “The demonstrations of the past week are truly frightening and a cause for concern.”

Almost two years of repression, not a problem. Four soldiers get hospitalized in the course of street battles, and that’s frightening.

What’s frightening is that these people are in charge of our government.
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Added, from Ewen McAskill, The Guardian:

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of being the WikiLeaks source and held in a military prison. It is the kind of censure the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning.”

Conservatives, Bigots Happy As Clams Over Screwing People In Budget Deal

“Compromise” is when both sides give up things. The Cons gave up nothing, and as a result are happy as clams even though most of them try to pretend they’re not.

As Teddy Partridge points out, the presence of known racist homophobe and self-hating woman Virginia Fox at Boehner’s side shows that the religio-racist right faction (aka the GOP base) is quite happy with what they’ve already got and are likely to keep getting.